דרך כפר

Youth Villages Spearheading Educational Transformation

THE NEED:

Youth villages have played a significant role in shaping the emerging society of Israel. As such, their major aim was to enhance values and behavior codes essential to the development and survival of a new state.

The gradual loosening of Israeli society's fabric was accompanied by a fragmentation of the educational system and an escalation in socio-economic divisions. This resulted in an alarming increase in the number of at-risk youth - children beset by inner brokenness, helplessness and social alienation. Given Israel's complex geo-political situation, and its ideological roots, this threat from within is both dangerous and unacceptable.

THE INITIATIVE:

Yemin Orde Initiatives, founded by Yemin Orde Youth Village educators, friends and supporters, advocates a time-proven, potent antidote to these painful realities. Insights and knowledge which have been accumulated at Yemin Orde over decades have been formulated into an applicable modus operandi titled 'The Village Way'.

Israeli youth villages, spread across the map of the country, are a national asset. By being empowered with 'The Village Way' methodology, these villages could again become proactive hubs of change, influencing ever widening circles. Yemin Orde Initiatives, in partnership with the state's Ministry of Education, provides training, logistic support and resources to turn this vision into a reality.

METHODOLOGICAL CORNERSTONES:

1. Coherence as a healing factor
   Yemin Orde Initiatives introduces a healing factor in the field of at-risk child care - a "sense of coherence". The existential early experience of at-risk children entails abandonment and separation, bewilderment in the face of a host of conflicting messages as well as a complete lack of stable life anchors. Many symptoms prevalent among at-risk youth – imminent frustration, lack of self control, poor language skills and deficiency in abstract thinking – can be attributed to a lacking sense of coherence.¹
   'The Village Way ' maintains that educational or therapeutic endeavors to transform young lives must first and foremost create an all-encompassing environment that is able to draw all the fragmented components into a unified center of gravity.
2. Educational environments as communities of meaning²
   It is our profound belief that the world doesn't need educational institutions per se – what it does need are educational institutions that have been transformed into dynamic, value-laden communities for children, places where young lives are shaped in exposure to holistic qualities, in total contradiction to the conflicting messages of the fragmented, confusing world outside.³
   Historically, the centrality of the relationship between parents and children could be taken for granted. In past times, most of humanity lived in villages and tribal communities, surrounded by their extended family, and a sense of coherence and meaning was naturally woven into the flow of life. Children grew and developed within a wholesome aura, in which parents and other significant adult figures radiated an emotionally coherent set of qualities, connections, skills and beliefs. Corresponding with the African proverb "It takes a village to raise a child" – 'The Village Way' aims to reproduce, for the benefit of children here and now, the qualities and structure that were the very essence of the original village of humanity. We cannot return to the lost village of humanity. We can, however, create a 'village state of mind' –a deliberately structured inter-connectedness with others that is natural to the anticipatory structure of human consciousness.
3. The narrative⁴ – its role in the educational process
   The ' Village Way ' interweaves six realms of content within the time-space continuum of the children. Words, deeds, customs and symbols are consistently present in the child's developing inner narrative. These themes gradually instill recognition and pride in the past, a sense of direction and security about the future, openness to transcendent values, a will to improve communal reality, and insights regarding their weaknesses and strengths.
4. Indicators of success - rethinking
   The " Village Way " challenges the relevance of the major paradigm for measurement and assessment of educational programs, namely scholastic performance. It was T.S. Eliot who lamented the decline of intellectual culture, asking:
   'Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
   Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?'⁵
   "The Village Way " believes that the aim of education is to instill in young individuals knowledge and wisdom derived from an interaction with a surrounding environment of substance and meaning.⁶ Therefore, a valid indicator of success is a graduate's ability to become a normative head of household and a contributing member of society. In this "age of information", characterized by constant measurement and comparison, it is extremely unpopular to place a seemingly unquantifiable paradigm ahead of scholastic achievements. Yet, the " Village Way " does exactly that. Furthermore, we assert that scholastic achievements will, in fact, be a most welcome by-product of a successful upbringing of a human being.

Yemin Orde Initiatives, by propagating the Yemin Orde model, endeavors to rejuvenate and transform educational entities into communities of meaning, thus activating an educational grassroots movement to spearhead change on a national scale.

Chaim Peri, January 2010

1. Unraveling the mystery of health: how people manage stress and stay well/ Aaron Antonovsky.
   San Francisco , California.: Jossey-Bass Publication, 1987.
2. The vision of the late Kurt Hahn , founder of the Salem and Gordonstoun schools, who believed that schools of the future must function as communities of meaning. See also: Thomas James - Journal of Experiential Education, 1990 " Kurt Hahn and the Aims of Education" ; http://www.kurthahn.org/writings/writings.html
3. It was Neil Postman who most clearly voiced the need to rethink what schools are for – replacing negative 'gods' with positive ones. See: "The End of Education", Neil Postman, New York , Knopf, 1995.
4. Jerome S. Bruner believed that the principle of "knowledge structures" necessitates the structuring of spiral educational programs that periodically re-visit fundamental concepts in order to enhance their comprehension by the child. Thus, seemingly "sterile" knowledge is progressively augmented by deeper layers of meaning uncovered within the inner world of the learner.
   The " Village Way " expands Bruner's ideas beyond the field of knowledge acquisition to the complete and diverse network that is life in the educational system. This is consistent with Jerome S. Bruner's later reasoning: "…the evolution of the hominid mind is linked to the development of a way of life where "reality" is represented by a symbolism shared by members of a cultural community […] This symbolic mode is not only shared by a community, but conserved, elaborated and passed on to succeeding generations who, by virtue of this transmission, continue to maintain the culture's identity and way of life"4. Indeed, these elements are the very core of the " Village Way ". See also: The Process of Education / J.S. Bruner, Harvard University Press, 1977, and The Culture of Education / J.S. Bruner, Harvard University Press, 1996
5. Choruses from The Rock / T. S. Eliot, Faber & Faber, London 1934
6. In the mid 20th century, the Coleman Report concluded that academic achievements are unequivocally conditioned by the child's social background. The fact that, years later, scholastic achievements are still heralded as the principle paradigm for success, poses the question whether the Coleman Report has ever really been acknowledged. See also: Equality of Education / J.S. Coleman et al, US Department of Health, Education and Welfare, US Government Printing Office, 1966