Passover Way to Teach' Argues That the

¶ … Passover Way to Teach' argues that the Jewish Haggadah offers an approach to learning that solves current learning problems. While the author does offer some valid arguments about ways to teach, his argument also includes several flaws that invalidate his claims. The article uses the 2000-year-old booklet, the Haggadah, to describe a way of teaching that puts the child as central to the process. The first concern this raises is that the Haggadah deals with teaching in regard to teaching spiritual values, not teaching subjects like we do today.

The article makes a leap between what the Haggadah refers to and modern teaching, taking the lessons of the Haggadah far out of context. The second concern is that the Haggadah is an ancient text. Its concept of learning does not apply easily to modern society and the modern school environment. Again, there is a stretch involved in applying the lessons of the Haggadah to modern teaching.

Despite the extreme differences between the focus of the Haggadah and modern education, the article compares the two, arguing that the Haggadah is a better approach, "the Haggadah includes a balance of approaches, in contrast to all-or-nothing stances common in education today" (Rothstein 7). Looking more closely at this issue and understanding the difference between the purpose of the Haggadah and the purpose of modern education, this argument is at best simplistic and at worst, unfair and ungrounded.

If these concerns are ignored and the message of the article examined, we then also see several other problems. The article claims to provide an answer to the debate of how children with varying abilities should be taught. The basic message is described as "train a child according to his way" (Rothstein 8). This message in itself has merit since every child does have different abilities and different ways of learning. Yet even in this message, there is nothing new.

Every teacher, including anyone who takes on a role of teaching, caters the teaching process to the audience. We could imagine a mother answering questions her children pose. A six-year-old asking what heaven is would get a very different answer than a fourteen-year-old who asks the same question. In the article the author says "the Haggadah states and answers questions differently for children with different knowledge or attitudes" (Rothstein 8). This however, is a simple statement and offers nothing profound or anything fundamentally different from the teaching methods of today.

The author then expands on the idea of the child as the basis for learning saying that the Haggadah "insists that it be taught in response to questions" (Rothstein 8) and that "Seder cannot succeed unless children become curious enough to question it" (Rothstein 9). There are three major problems with this argument. Firstly, if we only teach children what they ask, each child would have to be taught separately and each child would learn different things.

The reality of the school system is that learning has to be standardized in some way. The breakdown in the application here is largely related to the fact that the Haggadah refers only to learning spiritual knowledge and traditions, not to the knowledge our modern society includes. The second problem is that this approach is likely to prevent a child's progress. In a standardized system such as our modern schooling system, a child learns as per the curriculum. For example, at a certain level a child learns to write.

Without this knowledge of writing, a child may never ask to learn to write. According to the ideas of the Haggadah, this would mean the child would never learn to write. The same applies to all areas, for a child to ask a question they would need some knowledge of it before asking. The third problem is that this approach ultimately rewards one characteristic in children, curiosity. For a child not to be taught because they lack the curiosity to ask questions, is neither fair or effective.

A child that does not ask questions may still wish to learn and even a child that does not wish to learn, may need this desire inspired in them by having some learning forced upon them. The best point that the article makes is that everyone should learn based on their individual needs. The flaw in the argument made is that the distinction is not made between what is learned and how it is learned. The article focuses on what is learned, arguing that this should be tailored to the.