Clarity on the Change to Milken's Hebrew and Jewish Studies Requirement
Any great school’s curriculum is fluid and evolving, and at Milken we are committed to achieving best practice in all of our academic areas. Part of that best practice requires balancing the required aspects of our academic program with the opportunity for students to exercise autonomy and achieve mastery. As a pluralist Jewish school, it is also our sacred duty to fully engage each of our students in Jewish learning and life, while celebrating our community’s diversity of cultural and spiritual practice. To that end, we offer a wide range of coursework and co-curricular opportunities, including multiple pathways to fulfilling our Jewish and Israel Studies requirements.
We currently have, and have always had, a four-year Jewish Studies requirement and a four-year World Language requirement. Historically, all students were required to enroll in Hebrew as their required World Language. The rationale for this was to have students achieve the two sets of learning outcomes—one rooted in the study of a language, and the other rooted in an exploration of Jewish culture, identity and values (J-CIV). Beginning in the 2018-2019 school year, we have amended the single requirement into two separate requirements—World Language and J-CIV—to better represent the intended learning outcomes. As a pluralist school, we recognize that there are many different paths to Jewish engagement within the boundaries of our mission, not all of which require achieving the specific, high-level proficiencies in reading, writing, listening, and speaking required for a course to fulfill the World Language requirement for college matriculation. Students who take Hebrew as a world language will simultaneously fulfill both requirements and students who would prefer to explore Jewish culture, identity, and values through pathways other than Hebrew as a world language will now have that option.
J-CIV courses share many of the essential elements of our Hebrew Language curriculum:
- Exploration of foundational Jewish texts that support major tenets of Jewish life.
- Exploration of foundational Jewish values and essential questions.
- Understanding of important trends in Jewish history and geography.
- Understanding the history, culture, challenges, and opportunities of the land and state of Israel.
While the J-CIV courses are not designed for proficiency, Hebrew language will be infused into the learning experience.
Over the course of the past five years leading to this change, the instructional leadership team worked deliberately to gather data and feedback from multiple constituents and peer institutions. We looked at World Language, Hebrew, and Jewish Studies requirements and course offerings at Jewish day schools across the country and at independent schools across Los Angeles. We looked at internal data on student achievement in Hebrew language acquisition, and examined data on both student and parent satisfaction with our Hebrew language program, Jewish engagement, and pluralism. We worked collaboratively with members of the school’s Hebrew and Jewish Studies faculty, the Academic Planning and College Counseling teams, the Education Committee, the Jewish & Israel Studies Committee, and members of the Board of Trustees. The process has been rigorous and representative of the diverse perspectives and shared values of our community.
At Milken, we are fully committed to the teaching of Hebrew as an essential part of the school’s experience—and, moreover, committed to teaching it well. To us, Hebrew isn’t just another language; it is lashon hakodesh, our holy tongue, the common vocabulary of our people, our connection to the land and State of Israel, and the entry point to millennia of culture, thought and practice. We continue to investigate and implement new Hebrew curricula, teaching methodologies, and opportunities to interact with the language authentically in order to ensure that our Hebrew program is the very best that it can be.
To be clear, Hebrew as a World Language will continue to be a priority at Milken. We encourage all of our students to continue their Hebrew language studies in pursuit of proficiency, and the overwhelming majority of them plan to do so.
For the 2018-2019 school year, 9% of our students have enrolled in a J-CIV course and World Language other than Hebrew, and 78% of these students have previously taken traditional Hebrew language courses at Milken or another Jewish day school. Our obligation as a Jewish school is to engage all our students in meaningful and authentic Jewish learning, and we wish to celebrate the fact that there are multiple paths to achieving that goal with joy, intensity, and rigor.
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At Milken Community School, we think education is more than what you know. Our School, founded on Jewish values, is about who our children can become and how they can help others become who they might be. Because the world our children will create tomorrow is born in the School we build today, our mission is to educate our children so they can surpass us.
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