Block, Alan A. (2004). Talmud, Curriculum and the
Practical: Joseph Schwab and the Rabbis. New York: Peter
Lang.
Pp. ix +233
$29.95 ISBN 0-8204-6181-4
Reviewed by Barbara Slater Stern
James Madison University
March 12, 2005
Joseph Schwab’s enduring fame rests on his
claim that the curriculum field was moribund and that
curricularlists needed to rely less on theory and turn more to
the practical if the field were to be revived. To that end Schwab
published four essays between 1969 and 1984 that purport to
clarify the meaning of the practical in terms of what school and
education should be about. Alan Block (2004) in Talmud,
Curriculum and the Practical: Joseph Schwab and the Rabbis
seeks to explain these works and Schwab through a Jewish lens.
Block believes that Schwab’s writing is difficult to
interpret because it has always been viewed through a Western,
i.e., Greek and Christian lens, rather than through Jewish
thought, specifically the work of Rabbis from the early part of
the last millennium (p. 9). Block states in his introductory
chapter that he has three main points to explore as his thesis:
1. “The field of curriculum has been forever dominated by
the discourses derived from Greek, Roman, and Christian
principles and by the discourses and methods that derive from
those principles” (p.10); 2. “Joseph Schwab”s
work in curriculum, and particularly his exploration
of curriculum . . . have been interpreted within the
framework of these Greek, Roman, and Christian discourse systems
and have been, therefore, either misinterpreted or
misunderstood—perhaps even as a result of Schwab’s
own reticence to name the “J” word in his published
work” (p. 15); and 3. “there might be a renascence of
the field of curriculum, a renewed capacity to contribute to the
quality of American education when curriculum energies are
infused with the discourses of Talmudic study” (p. 30).
Each chapter of the book introduces an educational
problem, plunges into discussions of Talmudic disputation (what
modern scholars might think of as a hermeneutic approach to
research) that purport to relate to the problem and then attempts
to link this discussion back to both the original problem and the
author’s opinion of what Schwab would say about this
problem by citing material from his four essays on the practical.
This reader found this approach problematic for several
reasons.
First, I did not find it difficult to accept the
discussion in Chapter 3, “What is Jewish About Joseph
Schwab,” to be as much of a stretch as the rest of the
book. Whether or not Schwab publicly embraced or even
acknowledged his Jewish heritage does not change the influences
of his family and friends as he grew and matured into adulthood.
I not only concur that Block can make a case for Schwab’s
Jewish roots, but also that situating Schwab’s discourse by
differentiating Jewish discourse from Greco-Roman and Christian
discourse was an interesting and thoughtful idea. This was
especially true in the chapter on the Value of Schooling (Chapter
2). When Block describes the difference between a yeshiva (I
pictured the scenes in the movie Yentl) vs. a traditional
classroom in the western tradition, the differences between
active and passive learning were clear.
What was exceedingly problematic however was how difficult it
was to separate the author, Block’s, views from
Schwab’s. This is particularly true when one realizes that
chronologically the issues of standards and standardized testing
dwelt on in chapter 5 are issues Schwab could not have confronted
as his last essay cited is from 1984, only one year after the
Nation at Risk report and it’s unimagined stepchild,
the No Child Left Behind Act. Now in and of itself this is not so
terrible. After all, educators constantly examine our schools and
wonder what Dewey would have thought? Why not Schwab too?
Second, the use of sections of prayers without their full text
is disturbing. The casual, non-Jewish reader might not know for
example, that when the liturgy concerning God’s judgment is
cited, the sections on the responsibility of the human to repent
are excised. Thus, Block cites the passages concerning judgment
attempting to link a teacher’s evaluation of his or her
students to God’s passing judgment on each person during
Yom Kippur. Block is uncomfortable in the role of judge: it gives
him a stomach ache. So, we shouldn’t judge, we are not God.
True, but as Block extends the analogy about judging to teachers
he conveniently ignores the part of the liturgy that paraphrased
state ‘but prayer, repentance and charity temper
God’s decree.’ In other words, if the full text were
added to the chapter, then to follow Block’s reasoning, the
students have a role in softening a teacher’s negative
evaluation. But Block never mentions any role for the student
other than that of the helpless learner who is being judged. No
action is required, the relationship has no reciprocality. Now
that may be so in Block’s world, but it is not so in the
prayer used to make the case. Thus, as a Jewish reader, familiar
with the text, I had major problems with the analogy in this, and
in several other chapters.
In terms of readibilty, this book became tedious. The
circumlocution of Talmudic disputation and the stretch the author
requires to make the links, especially in chapters like
“They Pelt Him With Stones” (Chapter 5), and
“Who Holds this Book” (Chapter 6), are so abstruse
that they make this reader wonder how the author could take the
principles from the Talmud being used and apply them to these
situations. The book bogs down in the Rabbinic disputations; and
the circumlocution of argument, explained and commented upon in
Peter Applebaum’s Afterword, becomes more of a distraction
than a help in understanding the author’s thesis. The
constant repetition of Rabbinic ideas and of citing the same text
of Schwab’s multiple times in the same chapter is
off-putting. As a reader I was also disturbed by the lack of
attention to editing in terms of typographical and grammatical
errors—this was simply sloppy work on the part of the
proofreader.
In the balance, what does this book teach me about curriculum,
Joseph Schwab, Jewish lenses or approaches to education or Alan
Block? Well, less about Schwab and the practical than I would
have hoped, although it did give me a new lens through which to
view Schwab, albeit one that I am intimately familiar with as a
practicing Jew. I learned more about the implementation of the
practical in Applebaum’s Afterword than I did in the text
of the book. I learned something about Talmud, much of it
exceedingly trivial for most readers (e.g., the lengthy
discussion of who shall or shall not be pelted with stones, or
the borrowing and reading of books). I learned Block’s
beliefs about schools and about parenting, rooted heavily in
Jewish theology, and probably an interesting and positive way to
think about reform and repair of schools. However, would the
journey through this book be worth the knowledge gained by the
curriculum student or practitioner? I have sincere doubts.
About the Reviewer
Barbara Slater Stern is the Coordinator of the
Secondary Education Program and an associate professor teaching
graduate curriculum and methods of teaching middle and secondary
social studies at James Madison University.
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