A Pedagogy of Humanist Moral Education: The Educational Thought of Janusz Korczak PDF
Preview A Pedagogy of Humanist Moral Education: The Educational Thought of Janusz Korczak
Marc Silverman A PEDAGOGY OF Humanist Moral Education The Educational Thought of Janusz Korczak A Pedagogy of Humanist Moral Education Marc Silverman A Pedagogy of Humanist Moral Education The Educational Thought of Janusz Korczak Marc Silverman Hebrew University of Jerusalem Talpiot, Israel ISBN 978-1-137-56067-4 ISBN 978-1-137-56068-1 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-56068-1 Library of Congress Control Number: 2017930629 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the pub- lisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. Cover illustration: © weestock Images / Alamy Stock Photo Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Nature America Inc. The registered company address is: 1 New York Plaza, New York, NY 10004, U.S.A. This book is dedicated to my wife Orna; our sons Netanel, Avinoam, and Amit; our grandchildren Eitan, Audrey, Yona, Ariel, and Itamar; my siblings Larry, Sharon, and Sara; and my brother-in-law Gidon P reface Janus Korczak was among the most outstanding humanist moral educators the world has ever known. Exceptional individuals engaged in creative, life-constructing work can serve humanity as models above and beyond their specific field of endeavor. Although Korczak devoted his life to the education of children from youth through adolescence, as his life story testifies, and as he himself emphatically posited, pedagogy is the science of human beings and not of children (Wolins 1967: 204). I believe that exposure to Korczak’s personhood, educational work and thought will inspire hope for a more human world, expand our vision of positive human growth and cooperation, and offer us tools to translate this hope into reality. Unfortunately, for a number of reasons discussed in the introduction of this book, Korczak’s ideas, work, and life are not yet well known in the English-speaking world. It is my most precious hope that this book will increase the knowledge and appreciation of this outstanding person, who sought throughout his life to make the world a better place for human beings and to make better human beings for the world. vii a cknowledgements I want to thank the Palgrave Macmillan publishing company and its Education, Sociology and Anthropology staff for the publication of this book. In this context, I want to express my gratitude to the Mofet Institute’s Publishing Company in Israel and to its chief editor, Dr. Judith Shteiman. The first edition of this book was published in Hebrew by this institute in 2012. Dr. Shteiman gladly gave me permission to translate material from this first edition and to recontextualize and incorporate it into this present work. I extend heartfelt thanks to her and the publishing company she represents for their generosity. The Melton Centre for Jewish Education and the School of Education of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem was my intellectual, academic and educational home for more than 40 years. I owe my growth as an academic-educator and researcher to the positive, supportive climate that was fostered in these venues. The Melton Centre also provided me with two grants to assist me in the editorial and translation costs related to the publication of this book. Perhaps, most importantly, it is within these frameworks that I gave undergraduate and graduate courses on Janusz Korczak’s educational practices and thought over the past 20 years. I extend my warm thanks to the directors and faculty members for all of these gifts. I extend my thanks to the Aryeh (Leo) Lubin Foundation in memory of his parents Lilian and Moshe Lubin, whose contribution has helped me to publish this book. Many people have played important roles in my thinking about and writing of this book. In more ways than one, the undergraduate and grad- ix x ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS uate students who participated in the one semester and full-year courses I have given (and am still giving as a retired senior lecturer) have been my greatest teachers. I want to acknowledge here the debt I owe them. Among the many individuals, too-numerous to name, who have had a direct and powerful influence on the substance and syntax of this book I want to single out and thank Professor Zvi Lamm, Dr. Shimon Frost, Menahem Regev, Yehuda Cahana, Yaron Beker, Professor Dwight Boyd, Dr. Jeffrey Green, Lydia Bauman, Michael Glatzer, Professor Joel Perlmann, Dr. Michael Kirchner, and Professor Steve Copeland. Professor Zvi Lamm, may his memory be a blessing, a highly recog- nized professor of educational thought and pedagogy in the Hebrew University’s school of education inspired me to undertake the task of “conceptualizing Korczak’s practice and theory of education.” Zvi prac- ticed what he preached and provided me with analytical tools to realize such conceptualization. The late Dr. Shimon Frost, a Korczak scholar of Polish origin who served as executive vice president of the Jewish education service of North America (JESNA) before he immigrated to Israel, is among my most important Korczak teachers. I had the pleasure of reading and studying several of Korczak’s peda- gogical works and children’s books with the late Menahem Regev, a chil- dren’s literature expert and educator in Israel. I gained significant insights and interpretive methods from Menahem’s approach to these literary genres. Yehuda Cahana, of blessed memory, worked several years as a student apprentice in Korczak’s Jewish orphanage in Warsaw in the 1930s before he immigrated to Israel. In Israel, he carved out his own path as a human- ist educator in Korczak’s spirit in the country’s national education system. I learned a great amount of detailed information about Korczak’s person- ality, educational practices, and more which Yehuda readily shared with me in the many personal conversations we held together in his home and in the oral testimonies he gave to students in the classroom of my courses on Korczak at the Hebrew University over a period of close to 15 years— from his 75th to his 90th birthday. Yaron Beker is a philosopher, educator, and teacher whose mother tongue is Polish. One of his areas of specialization is nineteenth- and twentieth-century Polish philosophy and intellectual trends. He assisted me considerably in getting to the roots of Korczak’s ideas, unpacking, and understanding them. He also wrote the second chapter of the Hebrew ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xi version of this book, “Intellectual Roots of Janus Korczak’s Thought,” and his permission to include an abbreviated version of that chapter in the third chapter of the present book testifies to his much-appreciated generosity. Just as I feel strongly indebted to the four people mentioned above for the guidance they lent me on the roads I have taken to understand Korczak’s life, work, and works, I feel indebted to Professor Dwight Boyd, Professor Emeritus of the Ontario Institute of Education (OISE), University of Toronto, Canada who has been and continues to be my men- tor in the field of the philosophy of education. The two sabbatical years I spent studying philosophy of education with him, as well as the many conversations we have held together on an interim basis over the past 11 years have given me the analytical-interpretive prism through which I was able to place Korczak’s educational thought in the context of historical, modern, and contemporary philosophies of education. The following persons have been instrumental in the actual production of this book. Dr. Jeffrey Green is the editor of this book. He has also translated some of the writings of Korczak that appear in it from Hebrew into English. Jeff is an accomplished and well-recognized translator of works from Hebrew into English, and editor of works in English. Both the syntax and sub- stance of this book have undergone considerable improvement due to the high level of Jeff’s abilities as an editor and translator. I cannot thank him enough for the assistance and support he has given me during the differ- ent stages of the composition of this book. Lydia Bauman is an artist and art historian who also has a wonderful command of English and Polish. Her home is in London. She has trans- lated abbreviated versions of three works by Korczak from Polish into English. This is the first time these three works appear in English. Michael Glatzer served as the academic secretary of the Ben Zvi Institute for the Study of Jewish Communities in the East for 34 years, until his recent retirement. Throughout my writing of the chapters in this book, he kindly agreed to take a second critical look at them. Professor Joel Perlmann is a Levy Institute Research Professor, Bard College and Senior Scholar, Levy Economics Institute. He has contrib- uted significantly to improving the language I use to formulate my ideas and arguments. Prof. Dr. Med. Michael Kirchner specialized in general medicine in group practice with his wife Dr. Hildegard Kirchner. From 2007 until his xii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS recent retirement, he served as a lecturer in the Faculty of Education at the University of Bielefeld, Germany. Janusz Korczak has been a focus of his attention since 1984, and he has taught many courses, given many lectures on Korczak’s pedagogy and educational thought, and published scholarly and popular works on them. He kindly accepted my invitation to review all the chapters of my book and offered me many constructive comments. Professor Steve Copeland served as lecturer at the Hebrew University’s Center for Jewish Education in the 1980s. After he returned to his home city Boston he served as an Assistant Professor of Jewish thought and education at Hebrew College for close to 20 years, beginning in 1988 and ending in 2007 when he moved back to Jerusalem. The life, worldview, and legacy of Janusz Korczak was of considerable interest to him. Steve has taught a good number of university courses and has published several insightful articles on him. He also agreed to give this book a critical read- ing, and his comments have enriched and deepened my perspectives on Korczak’s thought and practices.
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