Picture this. You walk into school at the beginning of a new semester. But it’s not your usual teachers that you’d been having up until that point. Quite the contrary actually. You have new teachers which you had never seen before and texts that you’ve only dreamt of reading. But what was it that actually happened?
After JLA Ba’aretz was cancelled, JLA decided to do a two part program instead about Western Thought and Civilization. Before the Italy trip, we had a course with an organisation called Tikvah. It is an organisation where during the summer, many students in 10th, 11th, and 12th Grade go up to Princeton and learn about classic traditional topics.
During the course, we read many traditional texts such as The Iliad, Aeneid and more. There were many people that found the course deeply interesting and engaging. And there were also many people that could see the value in learning this history. However, there were also many people who didn’t quite believe that the course’s potential reached what it was intended to. Some people deemed the work over-the-top and unnecessary, whereas others thought that it was too hard to understand for this age level. Let’s take a dive into the thoughts and feelings of people.
Juana, a 10th Grader, said that the course was “unexpected and very different to what we usually do.” She also said, “although the classes were long, they were entertaining and the text was a useful source.” However, she went on to say that sometimes, she couldn’t fully read all the assigned text as it was lengthy and complex. In her words, “she had to take her own time and digest it little-by-little, so it made it a hefty task.”
Aviva, on the other hand, found the classes extremely engaging. As she says: “We had this teacher called Mr. Goldstein who was creative and interactive and had interactive lessons. He made learning about ancient culture and philosophy interesting.” She really could understand how one could appreciate those texts. Her only complaint is that she felt like we “needed a bit more of a bridge between Tikvah and Italy as not all the ideas fully lined up with each other.”
One of her main wishes is that we had a little more time to dive into each text as she felt that skimming all the novels felt quite rushed.” A lot of people also share Aviva’s view that they were really good classes, and it was a really good text; however, the concern was that we weren’t quite going deep enough into it to get a proper understanding.
So what was the general feeling of this Tikvah Program? Many people saw the text as an invaluable piece of writing that could be appreciated. But the main consensus was that it might have been better to take a little more time, and do a little bit less. But overall, it was enjoyable.
