Sun Tzu: On Long School Days

This article from August 2012 was my first attempt to apply Sun Tzu's The Art of War to classroom teaching, beginning with an examination of the long school day.

Aug 11, 2015

Originally posted in August 2012.

Sun Tzu: The Art of Classroom Teaching - Long School Days

I have taught in three different Jewish high schools. These three schools had at least one thing in common: a very, very, very long school day. On the left you'll see the daily schedule for the school at which I currently teach. However, the times alone do not tell the full story. Let's start from the beginning.

Students who live locally can probably afford a reasonable 7:00am wake-up time. Students who live "across town" (who constitute a third of our student body) have to wake up at 6:00am or earlier in order to catch the bus, since the bus makes several dozen stops along the way. When students arrive at school, they are immediately herded into to a single room to endure a lengthy (usually 40 minute) shacharis. Davening is often followed by either announcements, a dvar Torah of sorts, or both. Students are subsequently released to their precious 10-15 minutes of breakfast and socializing time.

Then the morning classes begin. Students are shunted from class to class for the next three hours and twenty minutes. Each class is exactly 38 minutes long. Students are given 2 minutes to get from one classroom to the other, and there are no other breaks in between. This allows for just enough time for them to pack up their belongings, rush to their lockers to retrieve any books or materials they need, dash to their new class, and sit down before the teacher takes attendance. If they need to use the restroom (or take some time to breathe), they must leave in the middle of class, so as not to be marked tardy at the beginning of the period - unless, of course, they are unfortunate enough to have a teacher who prohibits students to leave during class time. (And yes, such teachers still exist.)

Then comes lunch time: the 40 minutes of freedom and redemption for which they yearn all morning long. Here they finally get a chance to unwind, to socialize, to relax, and to tend to their bodily functions.

Before they realize it, their prison sentence resumes with the onset of the dreaded Double Period. For the next hour and 16 minutes - which, to children whose waking life is divided into 40 minute chunks, must feel like an eternity - students are subjected to a double period of a class. The more merciful teachers (such as myself) give them a short break in the middle, but other teachers keep them in their seats for the entire period. The fact that this double-period occurs right after lunch makes it even more intolerable.

After the double-period, students are given a generous four minutes before their next class starts. They have one more 38-minute class, followed by a 16 minute "break" after each of them davens minchah on her own. This tefilah will necessarily be rushed, since the sooner they get done with minchah, the more free time they'll have. Then comes the home stretch: three more 38-minute class periods. The light is visible at the end of the tunnel (except in the dead of winter, when its dark by the time students leave).

Finally, at 5:15, the school day ends. The fortunate students who live locally arrive at home by 5:45 at the latest. The students from the other side of town must suffer on the long bus ride with its many stops. Some don't get home until 7:00pm. And that's on days when they don't have any after-school sports or activities.

But it doesn't end there. School extends its pale and spindly arms into the privacy of students' homes in the form of homework and studying. By "studying" I don't mean "learning" or "Torah lishmah." I am referring to the dreadful task of "learning" (read: memorizing) material for The Big Test. If the student is efficient and/or hasty enough, he or she might still manage to find a few hours (often, the wee hours of the morning) to have some time for friends, hobbies, relaxation, and socializing. But these hours are few and far between. Inmates at correctional facilities have more time to reflect on their lives than high schoolers. It's no wonder so many of students appear bleary-eyed and soul-stricken at the beginning of the school day.

Oh, I forgot to mention: I've only been talking about the schedule for the all-girls school. The all-boys school I taught at last year had all of that, plus an extended Thursday evening learning schedule - which would last several hours into the night - AND a half day of school every other Sunday.

Now before you start quoting to me Gemaras about the intensive type of schooling system advocated by Chazal, I'm going to stop you right there. My rant in this post is based purely on my own observations. The guidelines, halachos, and ideals set forth in the Mesora must be understood and taken into account, but the first step is to recognize the reality that confronts us at the present.

This brings us to The Art of War. Sun Tzu said:

2:2 - When you engage in actual fighting, if victory is long in coming, the men's weapons will grow dull and their ardor will be damped. If you lay siege to a town, you will exhaust your strength.
2:3 - Again, if the campaign is protracted, the resources of the State will not be equal to the strain.
2:4 - Now, when your weapons are dulled, your ardor damped, your strength exhausted, and your treasure spent, other chieftains will spring up to take advantage of your extremity. Then no man, however wise, will be able to avert the consequences that must ensue.

Like many of Sun Tzu's teachings, the truth of these statements is evident. If you exhaust your soldiers, whether physically or psychologically, then your chances of victory are severely diminished, and in your weakened state, you will be open to defeat from a multitude of causes, from within and without.

What is true for actual milchamah is also true in the Milchamta shel Torah (the War of Torah). In my few years of teaching experience, I have found that most students are alert and eager to learn for the first five periods of the day, but as the afternoon drags on, they become increasingly weary. They become restless and fidgety, they lose focus, their "misbehavior" increases tenfold, and the overall quality of their learning suffers. By the time they get to the final periods of the day (which, thankfully, I have never had to teach), their minds have already left the building.

And the students aren't the only ones who are affected by the length of the day. The teachers who teach full-time are also exhausted by the intense schedule. For example, in my second year of teaching there were some days of the week when I'd show up at 8:00, teach six back-to-back-classes (with a couple of short breaks thrown in), then drive off to another school and teach for two full periods. I was able to teach effectively for the first six periods, but by the time I got to the afternoon classes, I was spent. My own exhaustion, when combined with the post-lunch exhaustion of the students, made for a bad mix. Those were not my proudest teaching times. I don't know whether any objective comparison can be made between the exhaustion of the students and that of the teachers, but neither are pleasant, and each exacerbates the other.

The lesson here can be summed up by borrowing a phrase from Chazal: "tafasta merubah, lo tafasta" (Chagigah 17a) which may be loosely rendered as “If you try to grab a lot, you'll end up not grabbing anything at all.” I understand that Jewish schools are under a lot of pressure to help their students achieve success in limudei kodesh and the so-called "secular studies," but I wonder how many administrators have stopped to seriously consider the question of whether their ambition has lead to a diminishing returns sort of effect. Are we trying to accomplish too much? And could we accomplish even more by doing less?

In any endeavor one can only push a human being so far for so long before the productivity level begins to decrease. Has our Jewish day school system reached this point, with its 12-period dual-curriculum school days? And how much of the problem has to do with the educational approach we have been duped into adopting? Personally, I think that if the day were less structured, and students had the freedom to learn what interests them, they'd be able to increase the quality and the quantity of their learning.

The need for reform is dire, but the prospects are dim. In major Jewish centers, such as New York and Baltimore (and probably elsewhere), any Jewish school that attempted to cut its curriculum or shorten its school day would immediately lose students whose parents would be afraid that their kids were at a disadvantage compared to the more "traditional" schools (whose "tradition" is not rooted in our Mesora).

I don't know of a good solution, but recognizing the problem is an important first step.

Do you agree with my diagnosis? If so, do you have any solutions?

The Rabbi Schneeweiss Substack

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