Shanah Tova and I hope everyone had a wonderful Rosh Hashannah. It certainly feels like the beginning of a new year, and to celebrate this last Sunday, Aviv, myself and the boys in our class all got together and made honey cake. The reason behind the making has much to do with making sure we start the new year off right. That includes eating honey, and other types of sweet foods to bring goodness and sweetness into the year.
The honey cake making was a success, as the boys could attest, and it was a lot of fun making it as well. They all pitched in on the making of it. It's always good to see them working together to create something both edible and fun.
Speaking of, in our Judaism's Great Debates class, we got to tackle the question of whether or not Collective Punishment was fair. To start us off, we thought about a theoretical class. Several of the kids in the class weren't paying attention, causing other kids to get distracted from what the teacher was teaching. The next day, the teacher gave this class a pop-quiz on the material she had taught the day before. Since much of the class had been distracted, they didn't do so well in the test.
In class we discussed whether or not this was a fair deal. Should the kids who had been trying to pay attention have been punished along with the ones who had been goofing off? The students in our class decided that ultimately it depended on if the teacher used the test for the permanent grades. If the teacher just used the test as an example, then it was okay.
The example led the way for the next part of the discussion. We talked about Abraham's courage in bargaining with God when it came to the lives of everyone in Sodom. As it turns out there aren't even ten worth saving in that city. However, we did contemplate why God felt the need to speak to Abraham first, and why Abraham got God to admit that if ten people were innocent in Sodom then God wouldn't destroy the city.
When we got down to it, the kids decided that collective punishment wasn't useful as a whole. There might be exceptions, but they couldn't think of any at the time.
What do you think? Is collective punishment ever a good idea?
As always if you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at bchalmer@gmail.com.
Also, please check out the blog at seventhgradecbe.blogspot.com
Bryna
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