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Day Schools in the Liberal Sector: Challenges and Opportunities at the Intersection of Two Traditions of Jewish Schooling

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International Handbook of Jewish Education

Part of the book series: International Handbooks of Religion and Education ((IHRE,volume 5))

Abstract

In this chapter I survey the origins of contemporary day school education in relation to two distinct models: one integrationist, one isolationist. I explore how, since the 1960s, with the proliferation of liberal day school education worldwide, these models have no longer been conceived as alternatives, but as complementary, if not always compatible. I suggest that the challenges in reconciling these two models account for some of the most intense contemporary debates surrounding day school education in relation to educational goals, curriculum content, marketing, and recruitment. I review these debates as well as other central trends in liberal day school education. Finally, I examine the questions and concerns that have been of most interest to researchers of day schools in general (and of liberal day schools in particular). I finish by proposing a research agenda for the coming decades of day school research.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    A third Hebraist/Socialist tradition flourished during the middle years of the twentieth century, first in Central Europe and then, after the Shoah, in survivor outposts in Latin America, Canada, and Australia (Frost, 1998). Conceived as “the instrument of an ideology rather than an instrument for the education of children in terms appropriate to them” (Adar & Chazan, 1977), the schools inspired by this “revolutionary” tradition survive only in Israel, or in the Diaspora, in an almost unrecognizable form.

  2. 2.

    Of course, there has also been no lack of theoretical work on day schools. This has concentrated around the questions of, first, what are the distinctive goals and outcomes of day school education and how might these be extended or transformed; and second, what is the place of the different disciplines of Jewish studies in the day school curriculum, and what are the relationships of these disciplines to one another and to the general studies curriculum. I do not discuss them here, since this work is well reviewed by Malkus elsewhere in this volume.

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Pomson, A. (2011). Day Schools in the Liberal Sector: Challenges and Opportunities at the Intersection of Two Traditions of Jewish Schooling. In: Miller, H., Grant, L., Pomson, A. (eds) International Handbook of Jewish Education. International Handbooks of Religion and Education, vol 5. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0354-4_40

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