I just finished 3 hours of mandatory Religious School bologna. The theme of this teacher inservice was, "how to integrate the arts into your classroom." Not only was it a total snoozefest (OH MY GOODNESS, who the hell thinks up this stuff?), but it was also mostly a waste of time. It makes me really frightened about the kind of education we as a community are offering. I was pretty sure, sitting there listening to the head of the religious school drone on and on about the importance of engagement and puppets, that my brain was literally minutes away from completely atrophying. Everything said during the whole program was, I should HOPE, completely self-evident. Really, I have to explain the project to the class? I thought I could just throw some felt and googly eyes at them and see what happens.
The other thing that really grinds my gears is that, while it all seemed totally obvious to me, every second somebody was arguing: "no, I think if you tell them what to do then they won't be creative and just copy you," blah blah blah. I'm not sure if people just like listening to themselves, or if they really just like arguing, or what-- but seriously? Seriously! Is all of this so crazy that we have to argue over it? Also, people don't know the material! We were talking about this wire-project to create sculptures of Hebrew letters, and like half the people in the room couldn't read Hebrew, like, at all. We had to enact certain Bible stories, and they got those wrong, too. And these are the flipping TEACHERS!!!?
People like this make religious school a total waste of time for the kids they're "teaching."
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I have a whoooooole rant about the myth of religious schools....... I was going to write this long thing on JewishGal about it, about how the only way to really get a good Jewish education is in Day School, or else to have a strong Jewish base at home that is supplemented by religious school (and then rant about how parents fob their entire religious obligation off onto religious schools, which is ridiculous)... Oh man, maybe I should write it anyway. Haha!
Anyway, just wait until Yom Limmud!!
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