Keywords

This book will lead you on a journey into the magical kingdoms of education and Jewish education. Our travels will take us on the highways and byways of questions, ideas, visions, and practices related to these wonderful dominions. The questions we shall encounter have been discussed by thoughtful and wise people throughout the ages, and they continue to be central to our lives as parents, educators, and students. There are three terms central to our journey: “philosophy”; “education”; and “Jewish education”.

The word “philosophy” refers to the love of wisdom; namely, the systemic activity of utilizing the intellect to explicate life’s “big questions”. While often associated with sagely looking bearded males wearing flowing robes, philosophy is actually a quality and technique that can be used by people of all ages, genders, and garb to examine important issues.

The word “education” refers to a practical activity that has been part of the human experience throughout the ages. Philosophers of education, educators, parents, and children of all ages try to understand the diverse meanings of the phenomenon called “education” and its implications for daily life. Indeed, the activity of reflecting on what education is and how it works constitutes one of humankind’s oldest and most important preoccupations.

The phrase “Jewish education” refers to the conscious effort of a group of people—described over the centuries alternatively as “a religion”, “a people”, “a civilization”, and “a “tribe”—to create and implement frameworks aimed at engaging their young and all of their members in the core ideas, values, and practices of that group.

The “compass” we shall use on our journey is the philosophic method, which is a technique dedicated to asking, discussing, and in many cases attempting to answer core questions of life. Philosophy of education draws upon the general skills of philosophy, but it is unique in that it is aimed at the framing, shaping, and implementation of educational practice. It is preoccupied with questions such as the following: “What does it mean to know?”; “How do people learn?”; “What are the goals of education?”; “Are educators gardeners who plant seeds and then watch them grow or sculptors who takes blocks of stone and chisel them into the form they desire?” It also attempts to consider how thinking might be translated into practical life.

Traveling on many roads over the years, both in the general and Jewish world, has enabled able me to meet a multitude of thinkers—Socrates, Rabbi Akiva, Maimonides, Augustine, Rousseau, the Baal Shem Tov, John Dewey, Martin Buber, and Carl Rogers—through their writings. In addition, it has been my unique good fortune to meet both in writing and in person some luminaries who influenced contemporary education—Erik Erikson, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, Lawrence Kohlberg, Parker J. Palmer, and Israel Scheffler. My travels have been nourished and enriched by the committed educators and effervescent young people who constantly ask “beautiful questions” and often provide “beautiful answers” (indeed you may notice that I love questions so much that the titles of most of the chapters in this book are questions!).

In my wanderings, I have tried to be loyal to my chosen field of analytic philosophy of education whose purpose is to decode and explicate the frequent confusion caused by people trying to talk “at” rather than “together with” others. The raison d’être of the analytic approach to educational philosophy is to enable coherent discussion of educational issues, based on the assumption that a clear understanding of concepts enables us to have a more constructive conversation about education and its practices.

In Chaps. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 of this book, I discuss a variety of topics: analytic philosophy of education; key educational concepts; the moral situation and moral education; indoctrination; informal education; travel as education; and Israel education. While I propose to remain loyal to the credo and value of the analytic mode, I have come to believe that there is a time and a place for both questions and answers. Therefore, the book’s epilogue is an essay of one educator’s credo, in which I—with a hefty dose of awe and trembling—present some of my answers to the questions that I have heard over the years while being “on the road”.

Our first chapter begins with the discussions of several meanings of the phrase “philosophy of education” and what this means for the practical world of the educator. Welcome aboard and thanks for joining me on this ride!