The Other Dual Curriculum: Jewish Community High School Students’ Reflections on What Counts as “Jewish” Learning

ABSTRACT

Research on Jewish day schools has long focused on the challenges they face in managing the tension between the “Jewish” and “general” components of their “dual curriculum.” Interviews with 34 graduating seniors of a private, community Jewish high school found that students experienced another dual curriculum within the school’s approach to Jewish Studies. This other dual curriculum points to the central tension of liberal Jewish education, which is caught between two approaches: one that is fundamentally discursive, deliberative, and inquiry based and one that is essentially instructional and normative.

KEYWORDS:

• Dual curriculum
• Jewish day schools
• learning
• students

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank our partners at Hillel High and the school’s graduating class of 2018, who gave us so much time and energy, and allowed us to conduct this study. We also wish to extend our gratitude to our research partners on the project, Marva Shalev Marom and Jeremiah Lockwood, and to the anonymous readers of the article’s first draft, whose insightful comments helped us focus our key insights.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ “Brad,” “Hillel High School,” and the names assigned to any other participant in this study are pseudonyms intended to maintain the anonymity of participants and the community. This project was conducted under the supervision of the Stanford University Institutional Review Board and corresponds with all guidelines pertaining to the ethical treatment of human subjects, including the maintenance of their anonymity.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ari Y. Kelman

Ari Y. Kelman is Associate Professor and the Jim Joseph Chair in Education and Jewish Studies at the Graduate School of Eduation at Stanford University.

Ilana M. Horwitz

Ilana M. Horwtiz is Assistant Professor and Fields-Rayant Chair in Contemporary Jewish Life at Tulane University.

Abiya Ahmed

Abiya Ahmed is Director of the Markaz Resource Center and Associate Dean of Students at Stanford Unviersity.