Scouring the pages of Elie Wiesel’s Shoah memoir, “Night,” a high school student formulated a question almost every survivor has grappled with: “How is it possible for anyone to believe in God after the Holocaust?”
His English teacher’s response: Good question, kid. Go ask your rabbi.
For Oakland educator Katherine G. Simon, who was sitting in on the class, it was the quintessential example of a missed opportunity to discuss deep, meaningful issues in a classroom setting.
High school curriculum, contends Simon, who’s better known as Kathy, often runs a mile wide but only an inch deep.
“We joke that the history courses go from Cleopatra to Clinton, and it’s hard to do anything justice when you’ve got your eye on the clock and you know that, come June 10, you have to get to Clinton,” said Simon, author of “Moral Questions for the Classroom: How to Get Kids to Think Deeply about Real Life and Their Schoolwork.”
“Two words of advice would be ‘slow down.'”
Simon graduated from Harvard with degrees in English and Hebrew literature, completing a doctorate at Stanford University with an emphasis on Jewish education. Yet, the director of research and professional development at Oakland’s Coalition of Essential Schools recently found herself back in high school.
Simon spent seven hours a day, five days a week for more than three months sitting in on classes at public, Catholic and Jewish high schools. Her research formed the backbone of the book.
“As far as curriculum goes, less is more. Instead of trying to cover a lot of topics, it makes more sense to go deeply into a smaller set of topics,” said Simon a former Hebrew instructor at the Harvard Hillel and an English and drama teacher at San Mateo’s Aragon High School from 1987 to ’92.
“Don’t worry so much about trying to cover everything. The goal should be to teach students how to learn, not cram every possible piece of information into their brains this year.”
In states where students must demonstrate academic progress with subject tests, Simon argues that teachers and students often think that anything not covered on the test is irrelevant. What’s more, she contends, meaningful discussion is not aided by high school’s fragmented nature.
“You have 47 minutes to think hard about chemistry, then you have 47 minutes to think hard about American history, then you have 47 minutes to sing in chorus,” she said. “As an adult, that’s not the way I spend my days. When I’m working on a serious problem and thinking hard, I want to spend hours, or the whole day.”
Simon advocates 90-minute or two-hour class periods, which might require a rotating schedule (Monday, Wednesday and Friday sessions, for example). Classes that meld the physical and social sciences are also a possibility. In short, an atmosphere more closely resembling a university than a high school.
After observing classes in both Jewish and public high schools, Simon described herself as “torn between” the two systems.
“As a graduate of the after-school style Hebrew school and a person who taught in those contexts, it’s clear to me that a day-school environment has the possibility of providing kids with much more depth and range in Jewish learning,” she said. “I’d be sad if every Jew in America opted out of the public school system and went to Jewish day schools. But on the other hand, I’d be thrilled if we had a really well-educated and thoughtful Jewish community.”
Yet when it comes to the future education of her 3-year-old son, Simon isn’t sure which route to go.
“I’ll have to think about it,” she said with a laugh. “We’re not there yet.”