The Social Justice Torah Commentary: P'kudei and Equity in Education

This source sheet is based on the essay on P'kudei by Rabbi Craig Lewis. Thank you to Rabbi Lewis for his help in my collecting of sources below.

Baruch atah Adonai
Eloheinu Melech ha-olam
asher kid'shanu b'mitzvotav
v'tzivanu la'asok b'divrei Torah.

About Jonathan Kozol, author of Savage Inequalities:
Jonathan remains one of the nation’s most eloquent and outspoken advocates for equality and racial justice in our nation’s schools. Now, more than ever, in this time of the pandemic and mounting racial tensions, teachers of young children reach out to him repeatedly for support and guidance as they struggle to bring love and joy and healing to our divided nation.
Check out Jonathan Kozol's website here: https://www.jonathankozol.com/

From Savage Inequalities, p. 105-107 (Kindle Edition):
Victor Acosta and eight other boys and girls meet with me in the freshman counselors’ office. They talk about “the table of brotherhood”—the words of Dr. King that we have heard recited by the theater class upstairs. “We are not yet seated at that table,” Victor says. “The table is set but no one’s in the chairs,” says a black student who, I later learn, is named Carissa. Alexander, a 16-year-old student who was brought here by his parents from Jamaica just a year ago, says this: “You can understand things better when you go among the wealthy. You look around you at their school, although it’s impolite to do that, and you take a deep breath at the sight of all those beautiful surroundings. Then you come back home and see that these are things you do not have. You think of the difference. Not at first, it takes a while to settle in.” I ask him why these differences exist. “Let me answer that,” says Israel, a small, wiry Puerto Rican boy. “If you threw us all into some different place, some ugly land, and put white children in this building in our place, this school would start to shine. No question. The parents would say: ‘This building sucks. It’s ugly. Fix it up.’ They’d fix it fast—no question. “People on the outside,” he goes on, “may think that we don’t know what it is like for other students, but we visit other schools and we have eyes and we have brains. You cannot hide the differences. You see it and compare.… “Most of the students in this school won’t go to college. Many of them will join the military. If there’s a war, we have to fight. Why should I go to war and fight for opportunities I can’t enjoy—for things rich people value, for their freedom, but I do not have that freedom and I can’t go to their schools?” “You tell your friends, ‘I go to Morris High,’ ” Carissa says. “They make a face. How does that make you feel?” She points to the floor beside the water barrel. “I found wild mushrooms growing in that corner.” “Big fat ugly things with hairs,” says Victor. Alexander then begins an explanation of the way that inequality becomes ensconced. “See,” he says, “the parents of rich children have the money to get into better schools. Then, after a while, they begin to say, ‘Well, I have this. Why not keep it for my children?’ In other words, it locks them into the idea of always having something more. After that, these things—the extra things they have—are seen like an inheritance. They feel it’s theirs and they don’t understand why we should question it. “See, that’s where the trouble starts. They get used to what they have. They think it’s theirs by rights because they had it from the start. So it leaves those children with a legacy of greed. I don’t think most people understand this.” One of the counselors, who sits nearby, looks at me and then at Alexander. Later he says, “It’s quite remarkable how much these children see. You wouldn’t know it from their academic work. Most of them write poorly. There is a tremendous gulf between their skills and capabilities. This gulf, this dissonance, is frightening. I mean, it says so much about the squandering of human worth.…”

Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences Summarized

1. Verbal-linguistic intelligence (well-developed verbal skills and sensitivity to the sounds, meanings and rhythms of words)
   
2. Logical-mathematical intelligence (ability to think conceptually and abstractly, and capacity to discern logical and numerical patterns)
   
3. Spatial-visual intelligence (capacity to think in images and pictures, to visualize accurately and abstractly)
   
4. Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence (ability to control one’s body movements and to handle objects skillfully)
   
5. Musical intelligences (ability to produce and appreciate rhythm, pitch and timber)
   
6. Interpersonal intelligence (capacity to detect and respond appropriately to the moods, motivations and desires of others)
   
7. Intrapersonal (capacity to be self-aware and in tune with inner feelings, values, beliefs and thinking processes)
   
8. Naturalist intelligence (ability to recognize and categorize plants, animals and other objects in nature)
   
9. Existential intelligence (sensitivity and capacity to tackle deep questions about human existence such as, “What is the meaning of life? Why do we die? How did we get here?”
   

(“Tapping into Multiple Intelligences,” 2004)
Gardner (2013) asserts that regardless of which subject you teach—“the arts, the sciences, history, or math”—you should present learning materials in multiple ways. Gardner goes on to point out that anything you are deeply familiar with “you can describe and convey … in several ways. We teachers discover that sometimes our own mastery of a topic is tenuous, when a student asks us to convey the knowledge in another way and we are stumped.” Thus, conveying information in multiple ways not only helps students learn the material, it also helps educators increase and reinforce our mastery of the content.
https://www.niu.edu/citl/resources/guides/instructional-guide/gardners-theory-of-multiple-intelligences.shtml

Our sages, who never objected to draw attention to the small and great mistakes and weaknesses in the history of our great forefathers, and thereby make them just the more instructive for us here too on “They grew up” make a remark which is indeed a “signpost” for all of us. They point out that the striking contrast in the grandchildren of Abraham may have been due, not so much to a difference in their temperaments as to mistakes in the way they were brought up. As long as they were little, no attention was paid to the slumbering differences in their natures (see on V. 24) both had exactly the same teaching and educational treatment, and the great law of education “instruct the child according to his way” was forgotten: That each child must be treated differently, with an eye to the slumbering tendencies of his nature, and out of them, be educated to develop his special characteristics for the one pure human and Jewish life. The great Jewish task in life is basically simple, one and the same for all, but in realization is as complicated and varied as human natures and tendencies are …
~Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808-1888, Germany)
quoted from "Educating Both Jacob and Esau," by Rabbi Todd Berman
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/educating-both-jacob-and-esau/

The activities we deem holy—prayer, study, acts of loving-kindness—are traditionally done with or for others. We come together as a community to pray. And when we pray, while there is time for personal prayer, all of our prayers are collective statements. They bind us not only to God, but also to our people-past, present, and future. Most often, we pray using the word anachnu, "we," rather than with the word, ani, "I"; every I helps form we, and my own personal prayers are tied to those of the community.
When we study, we traditionally study with a partner in chevruta, in "fellowship." In the Babylonian Talmud, Taanit 7a, we are told: As fire does not burn when isolated, so will the word of Torah not be preserved when studied by oneself. The Torah itself and its enduring impact are threatened if each of us studies alone. When we study with others, we learn dimensions of Torah that would otherwise elude us. The meaning that Torah has for each of us is enhanced and enriched when we realize it is not meant for our own individual sake, but for ourselves together with the others we engage with.
Finally, g'milut chasidim, "acts of loving-kindness," are predicated on there being others in the world for whom we care, with whom we identify, and toward whom we extend our presence, our love, our kindness. We cannot fulfill the mitzvot of visiting the sick, caring for the widow and the orphan, burying the dead, and so on if we do not see ourselves as part of a larger whole.
~Rabbi Nancy H. Wiener
https://reformjudaism.org/learning/torah-study/torah-commentary/chazak-chazak-vnitchazeik-1