The Talmud – Can a 1500 year old document be a model for modern educational practice?
I'm currently preparing to present a session at Limmud – an amazing Jewish conference with sessions on everything from history, films, food, politics, arts and crafts. My session will focus on Jewish approaches to learning, and how they compare to modern educational thinking.
I'm particularly interested in how ideas about learning expressed in ancient sources mirror many of the ideas that we think of as being part of a modern educational approach.
This is particularly apparent in the Talmud – a huge and very important work that is second only to the Torah in Judaism. (Incidentally both the word Talmud and the word Limmud come from the same root meaning learning). The Talmud consists of two parts: the first part of the Talmud is the Mishnah, written down around the year 200. This comprises of the 'Oral Law' which until this point had been passed down from Rabbi to Rabbi by word of mouth. The second part of the Talmud is the Gemara, written around the year 500 which provides more explanation on the Mishna. In the image below the Mishnah and the Gemara are in the central section.
While the Mishnah consists of the opinions of different Rabbi's on a range of topics from Jewish Law, to ethics, the Gamara is a collection of the discussions and debates from Rabbis trying to analyse, elucidate and elaborate on these initial opinions. Importantly it is a dialogue - a range of opinions are included – and there is no definitive conclusion or answer.
A living dialogue
What is particularly interesting is that this was never seen as being the end of the debate. You can see from the printed version (first printed in 1523) that it was (and still is) laid out in a very particular way, that is not how most books are printed. The Talmud is in the very centre - and around the edge, are more recent discussions from various Rabbinic commentators particularly those of Rashi and Tosafot (For an interactive view of the different areas of the Talmud see this website). Until the advent of printing all cultures were predominately oral, and centred around dialogues. This changed particularly during the enlightenment, and now books are (although they don't have to be) generally monologic. For this reason, the Talmud should not be seen as a book in the normal sense of the word, that can simply be read and it will impart its meaning. Through it's design, content and layout the Talmud has maintained its dialogic essence. It is therefore part of an ongoing dialogue. It should not be 'read' but used as a basis for further study, and interpretation. In this way even the modern reader (or 'chavruta' - study partners) brings his/her opinions and ideas to those already written down, making it a living, evolving document. This echoes modern educational practices, which values dialogue and multiple voices over a didactic and transmissive approach.
As Jeffery Spitzer writes in a blog post on 'My Jewish Learning' - 'As a teacher, I’ve learned that the days of “Teaching is talking and learning is listening” are over; a progressive teacher understands that “Teaching is listening and learning is talking.” How happy I was to realize that the underlying message of much of the Talmud aligns perfectly with “progressive teaching.” The surprising conclusion of the Talmud forces a re-evaluation of the place of open discussion in Judaism.'
Image: TalmudSanhedrin56aPage1-01 from Mathew at Flickr https://www.flickr.com/photos/torah613/
In particular it resonates with the ideas of 'dialogic education' espoused by (Wegerif, 2013) and others. For my introduction see this blog post, although my understanding has evolved since writing that! By incorporating and allowing different voices to be heard, the Talmud creates the dialogic space needed for real dialogues. And by engaging with those dialogues the 'reader' is part of that dialogue, taking an internal rather than an external perspective.
This emphasis on changing the dynamics of the dialogue is expressed beautifully by Frieire (thanks to the #LTHEchat team for bringing this to my attention, through this publication)
Through dialogue the teacher-of-the-students and the students-of-the-teacher cease to exist and a new term emerges: teacher student with students-teachers. The teacher is no longer merely the -one who teachers, but one who is himself taught in dialogue with the students, who in turn while being taught also teach. The become jointly responsible for a process in which all grow.
Another central feature of the dialogic nature of the Talmud is that it is the process that is emphasised, rather than the conclusion. This can be seen particularly in passages where one of the arguments given can not possibly be correct. Why was this left in? Although correct understandings and carefully thought out evidence based arguments are important, it was left in purely because 'correctness' is not as important as allowing diverse voices to be heard. It is the process of engaging in dialogue which is central. Again this is something that is central to a dialogic perspective on education.
In fact we need to include diverse, divergent opinions even if they are clearly wrong, because for dialogues to progress, for intellectual progress to be made, we need people to be creative thinkers and to take risks. Even if that comes with the risk of failure.
Wegerif, R. (2013). Dialogic: Education for the Internet age. Routledge.
Freire (2011, 80) Pedagogy of the Oppressed
The Talmud – Can a 1500 year old document be a model for modern educational practice? by Anna Wood is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
I'm particularly interested in how ideas about learning expressed in ancient sources mirror many of the ideas that we think of as being part of a modern educational approach.
This is particularly apparent in the Talmud – a huge and very important work that is second only to the Torah in Judaism. (Incidentally both the word Talmud and the word Limmud come from the same root meaning learning). The Talmud consists of two parts: the first part of the Talmud is the Mishnah, written down around the year 200. This comprises of the 'Oral Law' which until this point had been passed down from Rabbi to Rabbi by word of mouth. The second part of the Talmud is the Gemara, written around the year 500 which provides more explanation on the Mishna. In the image below the Mishnah and the Gemara are in the central section.
While the Mishnah consists of the opinions of different Rabbi's on a range of topics from Jewish Law, to ethics, the Gamara is a collection of the discussions and debates from Rabbis trying to analyse, elucidate and elaborate on these initial opinions. Importantly it is a dialogue - a range of opinions are included – and there is no definitive conclusion or answer.
A living dialogue
What is particularly interesting is that this was never seen as being the end of the debate. You can see from the printed version (first printed in 1523) that it was (and still is) laid out in a very particular way, that is not how most books are printed. The Talmud is in the very centre - and around the edge, are more recent discussions from various Rabbinic commentators particularly those of Rashi and Tosafot (For an interactive view of the different areas of the Talmud see this website). Until the advent of printing all cultures were predominately oral, and centred around dialogues. This changed particularly during the enlightenment, and now books are (although they don't have to be) generally monologic. For this reason, the Talmud should not be seen as a book in the normal sense of the word, that can simply be read and it will impart its meaning. Through it's design, content and layout the Talmud has maintained its dialogic essence. It is therefore part of an ongoing dialogue. It should not be 'read' but used as a basis for further study, and interpretation. In this way even the modern reader (or 'chavruta' - study partners) brings his/her opinions and ideas to those already written down, making it a living, evolving document. This echoes modern educational practices, which values dialogue and multiple voices over a didactic and transmissive approach.
As Jeffery Spitzer writes in a blog post on 'My Jewish Learning' - 'As a teacher, I’ve learned that the days of “Teaching is talking and learning is listening” are over; a progressive teacher understands that “Teaching is listening and learning is talking.” How happy I was to realize that the underlying message of much of the Talmud aligns perfectly with “progressive teaching.” The surprising conclusion of the Talmud forces a re-evaluation of the place of open discussion in Judaism.'
Image: TalmudSanhedrin56aPage1-01 from Mathew at Flickr https://www.flickr.com/photos/torah613/
In particular it resonates with the ideas of 'dialogic education' espoused by (Wegerif, 2013) and others. For my introduction see this blog post, although my understanding has evolved since writing that! By incorporating and allowing different voices to be heard, the Talmud creates the dialogic space needed for real dialogues. And by engaging with those dialogues the 'reader' is part of that dialogue, taking an internal rather than an external perspective.
This emphasis on changing the dynamics of the dialogue is expressed beautifully by Frieire (thanks to the #LTHEchat team for bringing this to my attention, through this publication)
Through dialogue the teacher-of-the-students and the students-of-the-teacher cease to exist and a new term emerges: teacher student with students-teachers. The teacher is no longer merely the -one who teachers, but one who is himself taught in dialogue with the students, who in turn while being taught also teach. The become jointly responsible for a process in which all grow.
Another central feature of the dialogic nature of the Talmud is that it is the process that is emphasised, rather than the conclusion. This can be seen particularly in passages where one of the arguments given can not possibly be correct. Why was this left in? Although correct understandings and carefully thought out evidence based arguments are important, it was left in purely because 'correctness' is not as important as allowing diverse voices to be heard. It is the process of engaging in dialogue which is central. Again this is something that is central to a dialogic perspective on education.
In fact we need to include diverse, divergent opinions even if they are clearly wrong, because for dialogues to progress, for intellectual progress to be made, we need people to be creative thinkers and to take risks. Even if that comes with the risk of failure.
Wegerif, R. (2013). Dialogic: Education for the Internet age. Routledge.
Freire (2011, 80) Pedagogy of the Oppressed
The Talmud – Can a 1500 year old document be a model for modern educational practice? by Anna Wood is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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