Arthur Brody, the president of the American Association for Jewish Education (AAJE) warned this week that the “vast majority” of children of recently-arrived Soviet Jewish immigrants “may be lost to the next generation of Jewish life in the United States” unless a coordinated effort is undertaken to determine the most effective means of affording them a comprehensive Jewish education.
Brody said a nationwide AA JE survey of provisions made by local Jewish communities for the educational integration of Russian children “showed a lack of direction and uniformity as to how to do it properly, fund it properly and link it properly to programs involving their parents and families.”
He said the survey, which scanned 45 Jewish communities throughout the country during the 1978-79 academic year, found, “wide variances in methodologies” employed by schools to integrate Russian children into their student bodies, a “scattergun approach” toward communal subsidization of tuition costs; and a dearth of classes to educate parents — themselves deprived of Judaic instruction in the Soviet Union — about their religion, culture and traditions.
“Probably the most distressing disclosure, however, is the problem of retention — how long the students remained in the schools in which they were initially enrolled,” he said.
OUTLINE OF FINDINGS
Among the 40 schools providing data in this area, only four reported “some students continuing their Jewish education through high school,” Brody said. “The remainder stayed for considerably shorter periods — some as little as one year or only as long as they received scholarship stipends.”
He said the survey, which was conducted by the AAJE’s Department of Community Service, Information and Studies under the supervision of Department director Dr. George Pollak, found a preponderance of students were placed in day schools and were thus free of the necessity of attending classes in Sunday or after-hours supplementary Hebrew schools.
Brody said the day schools’ high level of Judaic instruction, concentration of classroom time and structured curriculum and learning discipline — the last best approximating the regimen to which the Russian children are accustomed — “make their utilization most desirable and valuable from the viewpoint of the Jewish community.”
However, even in this setting the AA JE president deplored “the absence of evaluative national guidelines regarding both the children’s integration into the student body and the means of funding their education. While the communities and schools are seeking to deal with these issues as best they can,” he said, “the crazy quilt assortment of situations prevalent today represents little more than seat-of-the-pants guesswork based on limited information and experience.”
CONFLICTING APPROACHES NOTED
By example, Brody said the survey showed that 42 schools placed the Russian children in regular Judaic and general studies classes, five provided special classes in both areas and 30 employed a combination of both approaches: 16 placing them in regular general studies classes but in special classes for Judaic instruction, and 14 doing exactly the apposite.
The tuition fee policies among schools which provided date “are likewise diffuse and uncoordinated,” he said. Eighteen schools require Russian parents to pay for their children’s tuition, 16 send tuition bills directly to the local Jewish federation and 19 receive lump sum allocations to cover tuition and other expenses.
In addition, Brody noted that only seven of 43 reporting communities provided special classes for the parents of immigrant children — these primarily through local Jewish community centers or community bureaus of Jewish education. The AA JE president said the survey’s findings “offer compelling reasons for the Jewish community to analyze and evaluate the practices of educating Russian Jewish children and funding their schooling.”
He said that the development of systematic techniques in these areas “would give invaluable guidance to schools and other agencies seeking to integrate these young people and their families into the mainstream of Jewish religious and communal life — more particularly, if the Soviet Union continues to lower immigration barriers and permit even greater numbers of Jews to come to the United States.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
