Jewish School Experiences

In this chapter, we present a portrait of the Jewish education teenagers experience at Jewish secondary schools in the UK, in their classrooms and in other school settings. First, we describe what schools advertise themselves as offering students, publicly communicated in detailed curriculum outlines. Then, drawing on the reflections of both students and their parents, provided in the course of multiple interviews, we reconstruct what students experience in their classrooms and in other settings around the school. We sharpen this portrait by comparing it with what those enrolled in non-Jewish schools recount about their experiences of Jewish education. In the course of this exploration, we probe the dissonance many children notice between what they’re taught in Jewish schools and (the topic of our next chapter) the Jewish lives they lead at home. We identify what students derive from these experiences to construct their Jewish lives. We conclude that, ultimately, what students take away from Jewish schools, and what they value most, is largely consistent with what were their parents’ priorities when they first enrolled them, as described in the last chapter.