Auerbach Central Agency for Jewish Education

Moral Education

Articles

Ten Teaching Strategies for Helping Children Become Menschen:
The Role of the School, Home and Synagogue

Helene Z. Tigay

Historically speaking, since the time of the Bible, moral teachings have been central to Judaism. The Bible is, at its core, a book of ethical teachings. Talmudic sages are seen as moral exemplars, and medieval writers such as Bahya ibn Pakudah and Maimonides, Moses Haylm Luzzatto in the 18th century and the Musar Movement of the 19th century developed a systematic approach to the ethical teachings of the Bible and Talmud in order to teach menschlichkeit.

I would like to suggest ways that our Jewish schools can take the initiative to help our congregations and our families put menschlichkeit at the core of their teaching.

Whether or not we consciously choose to teach morals, children will quickly learn the values that our congregations, schools and families hold dear. By making moral education a conscious choice, we will make sure that we think carefully about what values we must teach, when to teach them and what methods are most likely to work. Religious schools can help parents in this role by providing parenting workshops, bibliographies and support groups.

The following are ten suggested strategies for teaching menschlichkeit:

Educators, rabbis, and parents must see themselves as moral models for children and they must behave accordingly. Children are quick to pick up the values that adults hold dear. It is therefore important that they behave in a way which reflects Jewish moral values or the child will quickly conclude that they, and Judaism, are hypocritical.
Educators, rabbis and parents must create a moral community in the classroom, home and synagogue, one in which children are involved in decision-making and the rights and responsibilities of all are upheld. In such an environment, moral discipline fosters fairness and opportunities for moral reasoning and self-control. Each child is respected and is never the object of ridicule.
The teacher, (and other significant adults in a child's life) according to Thomas Lickona, author of Educating for Character: How Our Schools Can Teach Respect and Responsibility, (New York: Bantam Books. 1992), must try to discover, affirm, and develop each child's special talents and strengths, building the child's self-respect and self-esteem. Only when a child values himself is he ever likely to show respect and empathy/or another.
The moral dilemma - a critical thinking approach - acknowledges that preaching and lecturing won't work. In the early 1920's, John Dewey developed a theory of moral education which emphasized reflective and critical thinking rather than didactic moral lessons. Dewey's theory has been developed in recent years by Laurence Kohlberg in the area of moral education.

The theory holds that youngsters need training and directed practice in resolving moral dilemmas and that with the skills learned, young people will become more capable of applying these skills to real-life situations and choosing the appropriate path of behavior. The underlying expectation is that such reflection will create morally mature citizens and, therefore, a moral community. Children will be challenged to move to higher and higher levels of moral development. Children involved in such an approach to moral development would become as adept at using critical thinking skills in the realm of Jewish ethics as in the sciences.
Stories are a potent conveyor of moral values and children of every age love to hear a good story. According to Lickona, Stories teach by attraction rather than compulsion; they invite rather than impose. Stories talk to the heart and have the potential to make a child identify with the values portrayed.

When our oldest children were young and we spent a year in Israel, we found a book in Hebrew that mesmerized them, . It was a compendium of stories about the rabbis who, through simple righteous acts, become heroes worthy of emulation. William Bennett's Book of Virtues and the Chicken Soup for the Soul books are such compendia in the secular world. We, in Jewish education, should be creating many such compendia of moral stories for all ages.
Like the Musar Movement of the 19th century, we should be creating small, informal discussion groups for adolescents to talk about moral issues together. Such groups would be most appropriate in youth group and camp settings.
We should create and utilize music for the teaching of moral lessons. Some religious groups, Jewish and Christian, have produced excellent recordings which employ catchy tunes and repetitive lyrics which keep moral values on the tips of children's tongues.
We must provide opportunities for service learning and opportunities to meet mitzvah heroes. A study entitled Youth in Protestant Churches illustrates the gap between potential and reality. It found that only 40% of the youth believe that the church does a good job of getting them involved in helping others. And only 51% say their congregation does a good or excellent job of giving them a sense of purpose in life. What missed opportunities! I wonder what our children would say about our synagogues. Our schools and families must provide opportunities for social action, sensitizing children to moral issues while teaching them at the same time that Jewish tradition is based on and steeped In moral values. Such an approach to Judaism counterbalances the impression of our young people, especially our adolescents, that Judaism is interested only in legal minutiae and ceremonial practice and that moral behavior and social action are humanistic and unconnected to Judaism. Therefore, when we engage our young people (and adults as well) in performing acts of kindness in the community and tzedakah, we must simultaneously teach them the Jewish texts on which these mitzvot are based. By doing so, we raise the status of Jewish ethics by showing the students that in performing these mitzvot they are carrying out Jewish values. Mitzvah heroes, according to Jewish poet and educator Danny Siegel, are the best teachers we have. According to the educator John Holt, Charismatic leaders make us think 'if only I could do that, or be like that.' True leaders make us think, 'If they can do that, then I can too.'
We Jewish educators, along with the secular school and the home, must help children develop the coping skills of self-control, so they can just say no to resist temptation or use methods of conflict resolution.
We must help a child see God as the ultimate source of Jewish moral values. Acting morally should be spiritually uplifting.

These ten strategies of teaching moral values in Jewish schools, synagogues and homes stress the importance of 1. knowing the good, a cognitive approach; 2. doing the good, a behavioral approach and 3. feeling or internalizing the good, an emotional and spiritual approach. Moral education has the best chance of succeeding only if all three approaches - the cognitive, the behavioral and the emotional-spiritual are used.

These ten strategies demand training in the areas of child development, moral development and Judaic subject matter. Such training and support for our educators and parents would go a long way toward helping our children become menschen.

From Highlights, Fall 1998/5759