Teaching and Testing in Hasidic Schools: Skills, Content, and Knowledge Automaticity as a Model for Other Day School Contexts

ABSTRACT

This article uses data from site visits to four Hasidic elementary schools in Brooklyn to examine how specific learning, review, and testing activities used in these schools might be applied in other Jewish education classrooms to build knowledge depth and automaticity. The literature on learning and cognition in secular subjects has identified many classroom techniques that promote deep learning and long-term retention rather than superficial recall, but these techniques have not been applied systematically to Jewish studies classrooms. Hasidic schools, whose overall approach to religious education differs significantly from that of other Jewish day schools, employ distinctive learning activities that incorporate many of these techniques. Some elements of Hasidic learning practices may thus represent a valuable model for other Jewish studies contexts.

KEYWORDS:

• Hasidim
• Jewish day school
• learning
• pedagogy
• testing

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ This research was made possible in part with support from the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education, Brandeis University.

² The reality of girls’ experiences in Hasidic schools is radically different from that of boys’ schools and must be treated separately. Work such as Bechhofer’s (2004) analysis of the girls’ Bais Yaakov movement or Fader’s (2009) exploration of girls’ experiences in the Bobover community in Boro Park, Brooklyn, provide preliminary insight into the education provided in those schools.

³ Many students are eligible for Title I because of their large family size and, in some communities, low incomes.

⁴ The English grades themselves might be in line with similar age/grade alignments in non-Hasidic schools, or they might simply start counting first grade from the point at which they begin secular studies (in some schools this doesn’t begin until second or even third grade.

⁵ A similar pattern has been utilized to apparent great success in the Shas Chaburah program at Beth Medrash Govoha in Lakewood, NJ, developed by Rabbi Sender Dolgin, which he claims will allow any learner to ultimately review all of shas in a single year. His program is modeled explicitly on some of the cognitive science reviewed in this article (Dolgin, n.d.).

Additional information

Funding

This study was made possible in part with support from the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education, Brandeis University.