Teen Education
Articles

Morally Challenging Teens

Rabbi Richard Fagan

Adolescence is a time of tremendous moral searching, of challenging authority and its values, while trying desperately to understand and assimilate those same values personally. Such is the aura of adolescent struggle and rebellion, that a friend asked how I could put the words moral and teenager together in the same paragraph. Yet, few stages are as fertile, or as important, for shaping character and developing moral meaning.

In one of the most famous Talmudic stories, Hillel is challenged to teach the entire Torah while standing on one foot. Rather than becoming enraged at the mockery, Hillel seizes the moment for moral education. He responds, that which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. This is the essence. The rest is commentary - now go and learn.

What Hillel did might serve as a guide to those of us who are teachers of adolescents - particularly in the area of values. Hillel demonstrated four characteristics:

• His approach was nonjudgmental. He accepted his student - attitude and all.
• He stated his own values clearly, and his behavior was consistent with his teaching.
• His response called for action, so that the values would be discovered and lived by the student Independent of Hillel's direct teaching.
• He required the student to examine his own question, his behavior and motivation.

As we seek to promote moral learning in our teenage students, we would do well to follow Hillel's example:

Nonjudgmental responsiveness Teens need to be heard. Whether their opinions are deadly serious or playful put-ons, teens want to be recognized for themselves. Our natural rejoinders of You shouldn't believe that...How can you say that... are not only not helpful, but frankly, beside the point. What almost every teen, stuck in his or her sense of moody, lonely individuality, wants to know is that the teacher or group leader is there for him, and won't turn him off. Like Hillel, a teacher of adolescents needs to accept the student for whom he or she is and then go on from there. In their struggle to adjust their moral equilibrium, our students need us as guides, people who know the struggle because we've been there and can, without judging, provide not only standards, but companionship in the quest.

Clear values, consistently modeled Acceptance need not imply agreement. The teacher whose studied neutrality implies that every moral opinion is equally valid is as off-base as the one who needs to argue his students' wrongheaded ideas to the ground. Like Hillel, we stand for something. A Jewish teacher is not value neutral, and our teens neither need nor want us to be. The teachings and values from the Torah should be clearly presented - hopefully as our own values. We neither apologize for them when they conflict with youth culture nor oversimplify them when there are no easy answers. After all, we ourselves struggle.

In presenting values, use actual primary texts from traditional and modem Jewish sources; these can provide a rich commentary on everyday life and issues. As teens encounter these, even without agreeing with the answers, they gain more ammunition for their own moral decision-making process.

Jewish values must be taught outside the curriculum as well. Policies which govern the school or youth group must be consistent with them. The life of the institution as well as the personal behavior of the teacher/group leader should be seen in that light. Who abhors hypocrisy in an authority figure more than teens? And who are more ready to consciously model themselves after a charismatic leader, for good or ill? Our personal example can be powerful in the inner life of an adolescent picking among values. Like Hillel, we should both teach and live the midot and mitzvot, the virtues and actions of our tradition.

Active learning Adolescents want to figure out things for themselves. Through family, synagogue or school, they have received moral tools, moral values. Using them, rejecting them, rediscovering them, perhaps finding new ones or new ways to use them are a necessary part of growth. As Hillel was not satisfied to tell, but sent his student to continue learning, so we must provide opportunities for our students to stretch their moral muscles.

One important way to accomplish this is through service learning, through active doing of mitzvot which teach and encourage hesed, Jewish compassion and love. Teens love causes. Their energy can be harnessed for concrete moral action by tying the cause to Jewish text sources, with the students themselves providing a living and an intellectual commentary.

Another effective technique is to start where teens are and move to Torah, rather than beginning with Judaic material. Programs like the innovative Taking the MTV Challenge (Union for Traditional Judaism, 1997) begin with a song or a sitcom which is both part of their culture and a mirror of normative teen values. After the issue is explored in its own right, Jewish texts are introduced. In any issue program, when both teen opinion and Torah presentation are given adequate time, students discover relevance in Torah concepts, and the level and content of their moral reasoning is heightened.

Examining the reasoning process When Hillel's student thought about the response he received, he would no doubt understand its implied challenge to his having asked such a question in the first place and to the thought process that lay behind it. His eventual conversion to Judaism would reflect not only the exchange of one set of moral traits for another but one species of moral reasoning for another as well.

Adolescents as a whole are acutely self-conscious and may delve into motivations, emotions and chains of reasoning. While this may be expressed in debate with authority, it is as likely to find its place in private poetry, moodiness and a reflexive, slavish following of the peer group. By leading a student to metacognition, to a conscious and verbal examination of his or her moral reasoning, a teacher can relieve the pressure and provide opportunities to understand and incorporate new moral gains. The contrast and Interplay of traditional Jewish thinking with actual moral situations can be very fruitful. The teen will not be satisfied to simply do; he or she wants to know why - and must know - If that good action is to be replicated.

Much more than his or her younger brother or sister, the adolescent is increasingly called upon by society to make decisions that matter. Jewish teens must choose how our tradition will guide them in making these choices. Like Hillel, we educators are faced with an opportunity: to offer our students the guidance that leads to love of Torah and moral living.

From Highlights, Fall 1998/5759