By Liel Leibovitz,
My short and glorious career as a high school teacher began, as short and glorious careers so often do, almost by mistake.
One day last year, an offer arrived from Deedee Benel, the educational director of student programs at Ramaz’s Upper School. Ever since my days as a press officer at the Israeli Consulate, I cherished my relationship with the school; for a few years, my colleagues and I were invited there to deliver Yom Ha’Atzmaut and Yom HaZikaron lectures, and were always impressed by the school’s willingness to forgo the usual pomp and circumstance in favor of challenging, meaningful programming. At Ramaz, we were thrilled to discover, Israel’s Independence Day was more than falafel balls and folk dancing. Instead, we had the students’ full attention as we spoke of difficult subjects such as living with terror, coping with threats and seeking peace. I liked Ramaz then, but nothing prepared me for what Benel had to say.
“Would you like to try and design a curriculum about modern Israel?” she asked. “And then, maybe, teach it to juniors at Ramaz?”
I took a moment to retrieve my breath. Then, I said the only thing that seemed sensible at the time.
“No,” I quickly blurted out. I was not, I told her, a trained teacher, and, besides, what did I know about designing curricula?
The more I thought about Benel’s offer, however, the more I was attracted to it. I was familiar with other curricula in the field, and could not help but think that all were flawed in one way or another: Some were designed merely to train the students as robotic hasbara emissaries, stuffing them with talking points and rebuttals, while others were so dense and complex that even my attention span, considerably less ravaged by the Internet, IMing and iPods than that of the average high school student, barely withstood the onslaught of information.
Realizing that action was the only thing separating innovators from mere loudmouths, I told Benel I was interested, asked for some time to think about the offer and rushed home with no idea what to do.
What followed were days and days of frustration. But, as the clouds of despair lifted, a few insights about the task at hand crystallized.
Any curriculum teaching Israel to high-schoolers, I realized, had to be honest. There was no point in trying to furnish young minds with battered slogans or clarion calls; students were too smart for that. With so many young Jews traveling to Israel and with so much information about Israel available, in English, on the web, I assumed that students had the information. What they might use, I thought, was context, and context never worked unless it took into consideration all sides of a given issue, even the unpleasant, unappealing ones.
A curriculum also needed to be attractive, because unlike teaching math, in which case a matter-of-fact knowledge of the material is quite enough, teaching Israel carries with it a veiled assumption that the educator wants the students not only to know about the subject but also care for it.
Finally, I realized, a curriculum had to be diverse. Speaking about Zionism and history and politics, as most of the curricula I had so brazenly dismissed did, was, of course, essential, but there were other elements, equally as important, required for the understanding of contemporary Israel. Israeli hip-hop, for example, could, if you listen to it closely, tell you just as much about modern Israel as could any textbook, and learning about Israeli cuisine could be equally as instructive as a lengthy debate about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Armed with these insights, I devised a curriculum of my own. It began by juxtaposing two texts, both written in the late 1960s. One of them, by Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz, an Orthodox scientist and a renowned philosopher, claimed that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip would lead to the Jewish state’s moral downfall. The other, by Rav Tzvi Yehuda Kook, spoke of the importance of settling Hebron, Jericho and Nablus, Israel’s biblical ancestral land.
The rest of the curriculum was just as divergent: Religious hip-hop songs were analyzed side by side with academic articles about Israel’s fervently Orthodox community, and a documentary about Israeli-Palestinian relations received equal attention as maps, charts and statistics.
When all was finally done, I presented it to Ramaz’s deans, Rabbi Eliezer Rubin and Ira Miller. They were meticulous and relentless: Will I be political? Will I be critical? Will I be balanced? Will I be nuanced?
The answer to all questions, I guaranteed them, was yes. After deliberation, and careful scrutiny of my curriculum, I was informed that my proposal had been accepted. It was time to make the plan come to life.
Together with the school’s Hebrew department, chaired by Dana Barak, I fine-tuned my lesson plans, calming myself down as I went along. Soon, I realized, would come the inevitable moment: Facing the students.
As it turns out, my anxiety was grossly misplaced. The students were, almost without exception, tremendously well-informed, spending annual vacations in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and discussing it with their parents and friends. But despite, or perhaps because of, their knowledge, they were engrossed by the discussions we had in class, eagerly took in the songs and movies, became intellectually and emotionally involved with the subject matter.
Take G, for example. The son of two Likud-supporting parents, this bright and effervescent child relished, when the subject of the conflict came up, in bombarding me with tough-talking slogans, stating that only a stern military response could solve Israel’s problems. Patiently, I took out a map, and showed G and his friends Israel’s borders, the West Bank, and the proximity of Jewish communities to hostile Palestinian ones. I talked about the security challenges facing Israel and about the Palestinian sentiments regarding the occupation. Then, I sent G off with a homework assignment.
“Imagine,” I told him, “that you were elected the prime minister of Israel. Now take this map, go home, and come back tomorrow with a concrete action plan.”
And come back he did, with an intelligent and intricate plan that included complicated border arrangements that took into consideration the minute facts on the ground. One may not agree with G’s politics, but it was impossible not to marvel at his attitude and critical abilities.
As I watched my students broaden their minds, and learn to see the country in all its nuanced glory, I realized that the curriculum I designed helped them place their knowledge, often disjointed and anecdotal, on a broader grid. The point of departure, therefore, as was the case with my glorious and brief career at Ramaz, must be one that may be foreign to some professional educators: The kids already know. Now let’s help them understand.