How to educate

Hi,

"Harms that come to instill rebuke are not effective; you see that the Jews were not humbled before Gd by the halting of dew and rain for three years."

(Ralbag to Melachim I 19:12)

Have a great day,
Mordechai

Students need to know they have the teacher's attention

Hi,

"R’ Preida had a student who would only learn after R’ Preida taught him a lesson 400 times. One day, R’ Preida was asked to participate in a mitzvah [which would take place after the lesson], and he taught the student but the student could not learn. He asked, “Why is it different now?” The student replied, “From the moment I heard them tell my master that there was a mitzvah to pursue, I could not focus. At every moment I said, ‘Now the master will leave, now the master will leave.’” R’ Preida said to him, “Pay attention, and I will teach you.”"

(Talmud, Eruvin 54b)

Have a great day,
Mordechai

Education is like a shoe

Hi,

"The fact that the maxim חנוך לנער על פי דרכו ('Raise the boy according to the course his life will take when he is grown') directs our attention separately to each individual child whose education has been entrusted to us, and bids us raise each of our children according to the future course of his life, should make us mindful of yet another reflection that is no less worthy of our consideration: Every child must be raised as an individual…

"The practical means by which we are to guide each individual child to this height of pure devotion to duty are not the same. They are as different from one another as the tendencies and abilities, the temperaments and proclivities, the intellectual and emotional potential are in each individual personality. Every shoe does not fit all feet. The objective of our educational work should be to raise children as different as Jacob and Esau in such a manner that both of them will grow up to be good and capable men. But if this purpose is to be achieved, the two cannot be raised by the same method."

(Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch, Thoughts on Education, Collected Writings 7:419)

Have a great day,
Mordechai

The Founding of the Jewish Public School System

Hi,

"Rav Yehudah said, citing Rav: Remember that man, named Yehoshua ben Gamla, for the good. If not for him, Torah would have been forgotten from Israel! Initially, one who had a father would learn Torah from him, and one who did not have a father would not learn Torah… They then enacted a system of public teachers in Jerusalem… Still, only those with fathers would be brought to learn, and those who did not have fathers would not go and learn. They then enacted that, in each region, the people would establish teachers.

"They would bring in the students at the age of 16 or 17, and then if the teacher got upset at the student the student would simply lash out and leave. Yehoshua ben Gamla enacted that they should have teachers in every land and in every city, and bring in the students at age 6 or 7."

(Talmud, Bava Batra 21a)

Have a great day,
Mordechai

A reason for destruction: Low salaries for teachers of Torah?

Hello,

"It is written (Yirmiyah 9), 'Who is wise, who will understand this? Why is the land lost? HaShem declared: Because they abandoned the Torah.'

"R' Shimon bar Yochai said: If you see cities uprooted from their places in Israel, know that they did not properly reward teachers of Tanach and Mishnah."

(Midrash, Eichah Rabbah, Petichta 2)

May we soon see the rebuilding of the Beit haMikdash,
Mordechai

The limits of vocational education

Hi,

"While, however, this training for earning a living is unquestionably a father's duty, beware of seeing in it the whole of that duty and of thinking that you have done enough if your child is able to keep body and soul together by his own efforts, or even to set up house. Of what use are a living and a home to him if his spirit is unilluminated, if he knows how to make a living but not to live as a Jew?"

(R' Samson Raphael Hirsch, Horeb paragraph 552)

Have a great day,
Mordechai