Curriculum night
Sep. 17th, 2008 09:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rhuLast night was curriculum night for K-2 at JCDS. My favorite question of the night from one of the other second-grade parents: "When you teach chumash [bible] in Hebrew, doesn't the fact that it's a different Hebrew confuse the kids?" The teacher's answer was great: "At the beginning of the year, we focus on nouns. ABout halfway through the year, they'll notice that the verbs work differently, and that vayomer really means amar, and we can teach them about the vav hahipuch once they bring it up." I was impressed by both the question and the answer.
[Oversimpliified background: in Biblical Hebrew, it is common for a past-tense verb to look like a future-tense verb with the prefix for "and". So in modern Hebrew "vayomer" would be "and he will say" but in biblical Hebrew it means "he said" --- or I like to think of it as "so then he says..."]
There was also a discussion about the birkot ha-shachar issue. Basically, there are two versions of the siddur (prayer book) -- one with the traditional set of morning blessings, and one in which the three "who has not made me X" blessings have been replaced by "who has made me not-X" variants. Most parents choose the latter (green cover) for their children; since our prayer community uses the traditional liturgy we have chosen the former (brown cover) for Tani.
So one of the other brown-cover parents raised the issue that her daughter has learned the green-cover text and feels that it's the one she's supposed to use, and the conversation immediately turned into one about pluralism, and how the green-cover parents totally respect our decision to be brown-cover parents, and how the kids will choose their own paths eventually. But the whole conversation was centering around the idea that the brown-cover kids were using the green-cover text because of peer pressure, which I think is not the case.
So I spoke up and observed that a good part of the problem is that the kids are really learning their prayers by listening and repeating what they hear, not by reading what's in their book. Their Hebrew decoding simply isn't at that level yet, nor should it be. But it means that Tani and the other kids with brown-cover books are learning the green-cover text exclusively, because that's all they're hearing.
It's not the politics of peer pressure and pluralism, it's the practicality of pedagogy.
At which point one of the green-cover parents suggested that in the interest of making sure all the kids learn both versions of the text and become able to make an informed choice, that for the in-class tefillot the teachers should alternate texts from day to day even if they personally choose the green-cover text for their own tefillot.
And that's why we have these curriculum nights --- so that these glitches can be addressed as a team by all the stakeholders in the class. Yay!
[Oversimpliified background: in Biblical Hebrew, it is common for a past-tense verb to look like a future-tense verb with the prefix for "and". So in modern Hebrew "vayomer" would be "and he will say" but in biblical Hebrew it means "he said" --- or I like to think of it as "so then he says..."]
There was also a discussion about the birkot ha-shachar issue. Basically, there are two versions of the siddur (prayer book) -- one with the traditional set of morning blessings, and one in which the three "who has not made me X" blessings have been replaced by "who has made me not-X" variants. Most parents choose the latter (green cover) for their children; since our prayer community uses the traditional liturgy we have chosen the former (brown cover) for Tani.
So one of the other brown-cover parents raised the issue that her daughter has learned the green-cover text and feels that it's the one she's supposed to use, and the conversation immediately turned into one about pluralism, and how the green-cover parents totally respect our decision to be brown-cover parents, and how the kids will choose their own paths eventually. But the whole conversation was centering around the idea that the brown-cover kids were using the green-cover text because of peer pressure, which I think is not the case.
So I spoke up and observed that a good part of the problem is that the kids are really learning their prayers by listening and repeating what they hear, not by reading what's in their book. Their Hebrew decoding simply isn't at that level yet, nor should it be. But it means that Tani and the other kids with brown-cover books are learning the green-cover text exclusively, because that's all they're hearing.
It's not the politics of peer pressure and pluralism, it's the practicality of pedagogy.
At which point one of the green-cover parents suggested that in the interest of making sure all the kids learn both versions of the text and become able to make an informed choice, that for the in-class tefillot the teachers should alternate texts from day to day even if they personally choose the green-cover text for their own tefillot.
And that's why we have these curriculum nights --- so that these glitches can be addressed as a team by all the stakeholders in the class. Yay!
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Date: 2008-09-17 02:41 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-17 03:42 pm (UTC)The traditional wording of the three thanks God for not excluding us from circles of increasing religious obligation: "for not making me a non-Jew", "for not making me a slave", "for not making me a woman." (Depending on one's personal circumstances, these are varied: converts say "for making me a convert" and women say "for making me according to Your will.")
The revised text tries to invert the sense and sequence, thanking God for including us in circles, in descending order: "for making me in Your image", "for making me free," "for making me a Jew."
I think they fumbled it on "in Your image", which is not in the same category as the other five. But it's a difficult passage, touching as it does not only on the delicate issue of particularism vs. globalism, but also on the question of gender roles and egalitarianism.
Fundamentally, they are supposed to be the same idea, though: religious obligations are a Divine gift, and one should thank God for being placed in one's particular cohort.