Intrepid educators share today’s most pressing classroom challenges — and how they confront them
It’s something Rabbi Yehoshua Levy, executive school consultant at Torah Umesorah, sees time and time again.
“I visit tens of schools a year internationally, and we’re definitely dealing with a new generation,” he says. “Mechanchim all over report that students’ attention spans aren’t what they used to be. Our world doesn’t focus well. The Internet and electronic devices don’t mesh with sustained concentration — yet being a diligent student and becoming a talmid chacham requires long hours of study. That said, most students are learning fine. The percentage of students who have learning difficulties is between ten and twenty percent.”
The lack of focus isn’t a learning difficulty issue per se; rather, it’s a generational challenge.
“Today you can get any information in a second, but young people have to be systematically taught to focus, think more deeply, and work things through,” says Rav Yitzchak Berkovits, rosh yeshivah of Aish HaTorah in Jerusalem.
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