About Vision Vision is a key concept of the Visions of Jewish Education Project.  Though the term is used widely, our understanding of it is particular.Because of the range of uses, the project considered alternate terms, but decided to stay with “vision” and explain what we mean by it.  We feel the best way to understand vision as we use it is to study the visions in the project.  We nevertheless offer a consideration here of our definition of vision.

What does this term mean in general?  How do we use it in this project, and how does our use of “vision” differ from other meanings of the term?  Click to read more about a “biography” of the word vision, how vision is used in literature on education, and to learn how vision is used in this project.

The Case for Vision in Jewish Education

The case for vision in Jewish education has been made over the past decades, principally by Seymour Fox.  The earliest articulation of the rationale for vision is his 1959 speech, "A Prolegomenon to a Philosophy of Jewish Education."  The speech was also translated into Hebrew and published as "פרולגומנון לפילוסופיה של חינוך יהודי"  in Kivunim Rabim: Kavanah Ahat (Jerusalem: School of Education of the Hebrew University and Ministry of Education, 1969). This paper argues that the means of general education cannot simply be grafted onto Jewish education, whose purposes are different. It posits Jewish culture and tradition as a storehouse of concepts and ideals for the determination of vision in Jewish education and offers specific topics and sources for this purpose.

In a second paper in 1973, "Towards a General Theory of Jewish Education," published in The Future of the Jewish Community in America, ed. David Sidorsky (New York: Basic Books), Fox makes the claim that the central problem in Jewish education is its blandness. He demonstrates this with various examples and proposes vision as an appropriate response.

A third argument was made by Fox, together with Israel Scheffler, in a paper written in dialogue with policy makers who asked whether Jewish education guarantees Jewish continuity. Fox and Scheffler argued that Jewish education without vision is far less likely to succeed. See "Jewish Education and Jewish Continuity: Prospects and Limitations," Monographs from the Mandel Foundation 1 (Jerusalem, 2000).

Other articulations of the case for vision in Jewish education inspired by Fox's claims include "Vision and Education" by Daniel Pekarsky, published in Judaism and Education: Essays in Honor of Walter I. Ackerman, ed. Haim Marantz (Beersheva: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Press, 1998). Pekarsky distinguishes between institutional or strategic vision and existential vision and discusses the implications for the practice of Jewish education.

In a personal essay, Daniel Marom writes about his education in Toronto and the need for vision in Jewish education. In "The Grandeur of Judaism versus the Provinciality of Jewish Education," published in the Canadian Jewish News (June, 2004), Marom argues for vision as a means to insure the transmission of the "rich content and profound relevance of being Jewish."

The Visions of Jewish Education Project began with a search for philosophically-guided visions of Jewish education. Our analysis of this literature showed it to be piecemeal, often insufficiently comprehensive, lacking in translation between theory and practice. Much did not address changed realities in the Jewish world after the Holocaust and the founding of the State of Israel, and in the context of Jewish life in free, democratic societies.

The Case for Vision in General Education

The case for vision in general education has not always been made with the definition of vision that we use, but in many cases it overlaps sufficiently to be informative and to create a bridge between the worlds of Jewish and general education.

In "University Scholarship and the Education of Teachers" (Teachers College Record 70:1 [October 1968]), Israel Scheffler makes a strong case for expanding the scope and perspective of the educator with references to the purposes of education in order to contribute to the effectiveness of his or her practice.

The title of Patricia Graham's article, "Schools: Cacophony About Practice, Silence About Purpose," is itself a call for vision. She discusses the challenges of developing vision at the level of public education in America. See "Schools: Cacophony About Practice, Silence About Purpose," in Daedalus 113:4 (Fall 1984).

In the closing section of The Shopping Mall High School: Winners and Losers in the Educational Marketplace, Arthur Powell, Eleanor Farrar, and David Cohen make the claim that the foundational work of deciding among alternative purposes for pedagogy in American high schools has yet to be done, even though the American high school system has been in place for more than a century. They make the case for clarity of purpose as an effective base for teaching practice.

In an excerpt from a lecture given at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute on "Policy and Pedagogy" (April 1, 1997), David Cohen describes schools in public systems all over the world being asked to "improve their spiritual and moral capacities."

In their policy study, "Systematic School Reform," (published in the Politics of Education Association Yearbook, 1990) Marshall Smith and Jennifer O'Day point to research that argues for the indispensibility of a coherent vision of curricular content and institutional practice for effective schooling.

Sara Lawrence Lightfoot's The Good High School (New York: Basic Books, 1983) provides glimpses of vision-guided practice, considers the price of lack of vision, and argues for its significant role in producing better high school education.

Fred Newmann critiques strategies for school reform that focus almost exclusively on process without addressing the aims of content in "Beyond Common Sense in Educational Restructuring: The Issues of Content and Linkage" (Educational Researcher 22:2 [March 1993]).