To answer Rabbi Goldmintz's question without actually answering it...

I work very hard to avoid having my students think that I am
anti-artscroll. I do not allow it in class (8th grade advanced level), but
I tell the students that I know that I cannot stop them from using it at
home. My main message is that Artscroll was not created for students at the
beginning of their learning, it was intended more for those people who
cannot simply breeze through a daf and not longer have several hours a day
to learn (a position stated by Nosson Scherman himself to the NYTimes on
March 1, 2005 - an article written on the day of the last Siyum HaShas and
the completion of the Artscroll gemara). I press the point that the goal of
their learning now is to acquire the skills necessary for learning, and that
my goal is for the students to never need an Artscroll as anything more than
a really good dictionary (good in the sense of being able to translate an
entire line - very valuable for aggadata).

I realize that in high school things may be different - students may be more
frustrated at the fact that after five years they still do not have solid
skills, and their overpressured schedules certainly leads to the search for
shortcuts. While that may all lead to being a bit more permissive about the
use of Artscroll outside of the classroom, it certainly remains feasible to
ask the students to press on in class itself without the use of the aid.

Of course, this gets into the issue of what is the goal of teaching Gemara
at each level. Is the goal in high school to continue to teach skills or is
it to get across the content, lomdus, values, etc.? I personally believe
that, if we want our students to continue learning beyond high school, we
need to equip them with the proper skills that they need in order to do so.
If however, the text is simply a springboard for broader and deeper
discussions, then Artscroll is a wonderful way to take care of the text
efficiently so as to move on to the meat of the lesson. But I suppose that
this is a different discussion...

Kol tuv,
Aaron Ross

On Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 3:49 AM, Shalom Berger <lookjed@...>wrote:

>
>
> With the summer upon us, I thought that Talmud teachers might want to
> discuss this question (see below).
>
> Shalom
>
> Rabbi Shalom Z. Berger, Ed.D.
> The Lookstein Center for Jewish Education
> Bar-Ilan University
> http://www.lookstein.org
> Blogging at http://schmoozed.lookstein.org
>
> NETWORK*LEARN*GROW
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Jay Goldmintz, Rabbi
> To: lookjed@... <lookjed%40mail.biu.ac.il>
> Sent: Wednesday, June 24, 2009 11:18 PM
> Subject: Query - Artscroll gemara
>
> Has anyone embraced using an Artscroll gemara in otherwise traditional
> gemara classes? Has it changed one's goals for teaching gemara? Has it
> changed what one teaches or how one teaches?
>
> Sincere thanks,
>
> Jay Goldmintz
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>


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