Shlomo Wolbe - Views On Education

Views On Education

One of the Torah's dicta that Wolbe was most known in his advocacy of was of opposition to hitting children; this, in light of the weekening generations in uderstanding the biblical verse in Proverbs advising "spare the rod spoil the child."

Known for being a lifelong reader of secular psychology and educational theory, Rav Wolbe created his own educational philosophyfor the Haredi community. In his important work on education Zeriah u'Binyan beChinnuch ("Planting and Building in Education") he presents a Haredi adaptation and paraphrase of John Dewey’s Democracy and Education(1916), in which Dewey presented the tension of rote learning and a democratic individualism. For Wolbe, the educator needs to “build” the students on the firm ground of Torah, the community, and Haredi yeshiva values, yet at the same time allow the students to “grow,” each in their own personal and individual way.

Wolbe emphasized the great stress Torah places on the individuality of every child and every situation. In his discussion of prayer he states:

"Each davening performed with understanding is a qualitatively different experience and has its own unique feeling and quality. It is indeed impossible that two tefillos should be identical - even though the words are identical. One can compare this to riding a train watching a beautiful landscape. Although the scenery may appear the same, the experience is different from moment to moment. At each moment, one sees the scenery from a different perspective. Similarly, someone davening should constantly see himself and his relationship with Hashem from a different perspective - just as the traveler is looking at the scenery with a different, fresh perspective." (Alei Shur I:2)

If one accepts that the Torah is from Sinai then one must accept that Torah study is so powerful that it can produce a human being who has superior understanding and wisdom in both heavenly and worldly matters. (Alei Shur vol. I p. 295)