Are Yeshiva Programs Planned?
Can the instructional systems design model help us do a better job learning and teaching Torah?
Within a fairly narrow range, nearly all contemporary yeshivas follow a single curriculum. Between bar mitzva and marriage, a talmid will be exposed to:
Between 20 and 40 daf from each of a half a dozen mesechtas of gemera with selected rishonim and acharonim (adjust marginally for those who end up in Brisk)
A dozen or so simanim in Mishna Berura
Most comments of Rashi and some of Ramban to Chumash
Randomly-chosen vertelach on the parsha
Selected passages from classic works of mussar
Thousands of stories
That's just a tiny subset of the full - and ever-growing - library of Torah literature. Of course, talmidim are encouraged to choose and complete other limudim on their own, and many do just that. But I think that list pretty much covers the "official" curriculum.
Now I know what you're probably thinking: this is going to be a nasty hit piece criticizing the "ignorance" and "foolishness" of our yeshiva system.
Certainly not!
Let me be the first to acknowledge that the yeshiva system has been, by many metrics, successful beyond all expectations. Given that 100% perfection is unrealistic, the knowledge, academic proficiency, and loyalty of so many yeshiva graduates is truly astounding. And the general Jewish community has been inestimably strengthened as a result.
What this article is really about is trying to better understand how and why things evolved as they did, what were the post-war yeshiva movement's core goals and hopes, and whether it's possible for things to work even better for even more individuals.
I'd like to ask a few questions. First off, who decided that these are the sources that everyone should encounter through their yeshiva careers? Why were just those mesechtos at just this speed and with just those mefarshim chosen? And what was the ultimate goal of post-war chinuch: what, in other words, was the ideal yeshiva graduate supposed to look like?
Regarding that first question, my suspicion has long been that no one consciously chose our current curriculum. The limitations, opposition, and chaos faced by Torah builders in America probably led them to go with whatever worked to attract and keep as many talmidim as possible. In a world where parents have many alternatives, it isn't about mesorah. It’s about survival.
As I've written elsewhere, the state of the modern yeshiva would most likely have been all but unrecognizable to 19th Century bnei Torah. However much the daily schedules in Cracow, Vilna, Lublin, Pressburg, and Baghdad differed from each other in 1900, none came close to matching anything we've got now. It's no secret, for instance, that European-born gedolim like R' Shach, R' Yaakov Kamenetsky, and (the American-born) R' Mordechai Gifter insisted that everyone learn much faster. And it's also no secret that they were largely ignored.
Buy why? I personally know someone who was encouraged by R' Kamenetsky to open a yeshiva that, by design, would cover more ground. The yeshiva opened, but precious few talmidim signed up. The best of plans won’t work out well if you can't attract customers.
So if there was no plan beyond "teach them whatever they'll show up for", how should we approach my third question? Just what should a Torah Jew know as he heads out into the world?
In theory, the correct answer is "everything." God gave us shas and poskim (and Tanach and midrashim) with the expectation that we'd learn them. But given the constraints of the real world, we’ll need a plan that makes the best of what we have.
Building a learning plan
Since I retired from my first career as a yeshiva rebbi, I’ve been working in the for-profit technology education industry. One of the reasons that there’s so much of that “for-profit” goodness floating about is that there are some very smart people investing serious time and energy into figuring out how to most effectively deliver content to their students. If the content they offer doesn’t provide knowledge and skills in a direct, distraction-free, and concentrated way, then not a lot of students will pay to participate.
So how’s it working out? Well I’m a very small player in the field but, over the past six years or so, even my video courses have attracted nearly 300,000 paying students and my books have been read by at least a hundred thousand more. Industry-wide numbers are stunning.
The key thing (nearly) all of my publishers insisted on was detailed project plans that answered important questions:
What’s the primary problem the target learner is looking to solve?
Why haven’t existing resources addressed that problem?
What skills and knowledge are necessary before tackling our content?
What specific terminal objectives do we want the learner to achieve?
What specific enabling objectives are necessary to get to each terminal objective?
What’s the most effective structure and framing we can use?
Building an objectives-based chinuch curriculum
If we have no clear sense of what we’re trying to accomplish, we can be pretty sure that we won’t end up getting there.
What terminal objectives would a properly planned chinuch program include? What, in other words, should we expect a young man about to get married to be able to do? How about that same man on his 30th and 40th birthdays?
Basic research skills of varying difficulty - like the ability to find and follow complex questions through relevant sources in shas and poskim - would probably be important elements. And strong familiarity with key principles and rules. How about some measure of fluency in Aramaic and Hebrew (and Tanach)?
Next, you’d need to think about which enabling objectives would be required to achieve those goals.
But then the fun part begins. Given that no one’s going to learn “everything” by the age of 23, which specific parts of shas, rishonim, acharonim, etc. will give us the highest concentration of objectives? That’s how we’ll create our curriculum.
Arguably, learning Torah is only a means to an end (see Kiddushin 40: - נענו כולם ואמרו תלמוד גדול שהתלמוד מביא לידי מעשה). What we’re really aiming for is שלימות וצדקות. So perhaps those should be the real terminal objectives.
My guess is that if enough smart people work together, it shouldn’t be impossible to come up with a useful objectives-based curriculum for 13-23 year-old boys. And then another one for younger boys. And girls. And then why not men (and women)?
Even if it’s unlikely that any yeshivas will ever adopt such curricula, they could still be immensely useful for individuals striving for greatness on their own.
Any thoughts? Interested in participating? Do be in touch!