f r BURNHAM P
RfoSsid
FREE Help for your
A free, 16-page booklet prepared by Burnham Van
Service can give you helpful work-saving, cost-saving
pointers on how to organize your move from city to
city. How to prepare to move, tips on packing, a help
ful inventory checklist of things to do are among topics
included. No obligation.
WRITE BURNHAM VAN SERVICE, COLUMBUS, GA.
Jewish Schools And
The Negro's Struggle
by JAMES ROBERTS v
(A Seven Arts Feature)
The question whether Jewish
schools in the United States
should deliberately undertake to
teach pupils that Jewish ethics re
quire Jews to support actively the
American Negro's struggle for full
emancipation is to some extent
academic.
Most teachers in such schools
seek to relate the traditional text
material to the current struggle
for Negro freedom, according to
Dr. Walter L. Ackerman, Dean of
the Hebrew Teachers College of
the University of Judaism in Los
Angeles. In many Jewish schools,
contributions are made from
Keren Ami funds to civil rights
groups. In many Jewish schools,
collections have been made of
clothes, food and books for Negro
children in southern commun
ities.
Discussing the issue in a recent
Pedagogic Reporter, Dean Acker
man notes that periodicals for
Jewish students, published by va
rious national Jewish educational
agencies, have given increasing
space to the problems of race re
lations in America and such art
icles are used as the basis for
classroom discussions. In some
communities, students in Jewish
high school classes have developed
tutoring projects “through which
culturally deprived Negro students
are tutored in systematic fashion.
Other students have initiated con
tacts with Negro youngsters in
cities and towns in the hope of
creating meaningful communica
tion between the two groups.”
While the sincerity which mo
tivates such efforts is beyond
question, what can be questioned,
says Dean Ackerman, is “the long
range efficacy of such efforts.”
The question is: “Will these young
sters behave any differently tow
ard Negroes because of these ex
periences?” This raises in turn one
of the most enduring of education
al issues: Does the ordinary class
room procedure of drill and recita
tion condition behavior outside of
the school, particularly in such
emotion-charged areas of critical
social problems?
There is one point of view which
holds that moral conduct is essen
tially “a non-intellectual activity
and is therefore beyond the influ
ence of regular classroom proce
dure and ordinary school instric
tion.” If this essentially Aristotei
ian view is correct, says Dean
Ackerman, then every school
“must either abjure moral instruc
tion or call into question its pre
eminent obligation to train the in
tellect.” This would mean that the
Jewish school “can do very little
in conditioning attitudes and be
havior towards the Negro,” on the
one hand, or, on the other, that
the school must develop a series
of experiences in race relations
that would seriously encroach on
the other legitimate and necessary
functions of that school.
In fact, Dean Ackerman argues,
the dilemma is more apparent than
real. There are elements in moral
conduct which are really intellec
tual and are therefore susceptible
to development through classroom
practices and procedures. It is also
arguable that the successful
achievement of objectives in any
of the clearly intellectual areas of
the school curriculum “demands
the attainment of skills, attitudes
and commitments that are similar
to those seen as essential to the
acquisition of moral conduct.”
In practical terms, this means
efforts by school authorities to
induce the pupil to arrive at a pos
ition on issues of the day which
are moral, then justifying that
position and then demonstrating a
consistent position in applying that
stand to other moral issues. The
school cannot guarantee that its
students or graduates will act
morally when faced with the need
to make decisions, Dean Acker
man agrees, but “it can provide
them with the skills and attitudes
without which no truly moral de
cisions can be made.”
"The acceptance of the idea that
intellectual activity is moral be
havior in its own right, as well as
an essential aspect of all other be
havior that would call itself moral,
has clear and direct meaning for
the way in which we deal with
the ‘race revolution’ in the Jewish
school,” according to Dean Acker
man. What is required is the
making available in the school of
materials and methods which, by
their very nature, demand the kind
of rigorous study and examina
tion “without which it is impossi
ble to "arrive at a clearly defined
position consistently applied to a
variety of problems.” This ap-
4
The Southern Israelite
