The Other Dual Curriculum: Jewish Community High School Students’ Reflections on What Counts as “Jewish” Learning

Abstract

ABSTRACT Research on Jewish day schools has long focused on the challenges they face in managing the tension between the “Jewish” and “general” components of their “dual curriculum.” Interviews with 34 graduating seniors of a private, community Jewish high school found that students experienced another dual curriculum within the school’s approach to Jewish Studies. This other dual curriculum points to the central tension of liberal Jewish education, which is caught between two approaches: one that is fundamentally discursive, deliberative, and inquiry based and one that is essentially instructional and normative.