Content and Context

In his famous essay on “The Practical,” Joseph Schwab (1973) identified what have become famously known as the “four commonplaces” of education: teacher, learner, subject matter and milieu. While the dictionary defines commonplace as something that is ordinary, dull or trite, educators find the commonplaces anything but uninteresting (Collins English Dictionary, 2009). In fact, we find them quite powerful. Educators often use the commonplaces in ways similar to what Schwab intended, as “voices” in deliberations about curriculum, what should be taught and how it should be taught. How can the curriculum draw on the teacher’s background and capacities? How can a program of study and the ways it is presented address the needs of learners and be tailored to fit their developmental characteristics and their learning strengths? What would subject matter experts identify as the most important content to be taught and how would they explain its significance? How does the social milieu affect decisions about what is to be taught and how it is to be taught to this group of learners at this time and in this place? Educational researchers use Schwab’s curriculum commonplaces, too, though perhaps in less self-conscious ways. In order to understand education, the questions researchers ask analyze and inquire into one or more of the four commonplaces. Who are the teachers and what characteristics do they bring to teaching and learning? Who are the learners, what are their salient characteristics and how do those characteristics affect what they learn? What is the content being taught and what is its significance for Judaism, Jewishness and Jewry (Michael Rosenak’s felicitous way of understanding what matters for Jewish identification)? In what milieu is education situated and how does that milieu influence teaching and learning? Jewish tradition offers it own commonplaces for planning and analyzing education. The section of the Torah that the rabbis transformed into the