I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the competencies that a rabbi needs to be successful and satisfied.  The language of core competencies and assessment mechanisms pervades higher education today, but frankly, it’s not a very sexy topic.  Our faculty members practically jump out of their seats when we’re discussing our vision for the rabbinate or when we are considering new programs and pedagogies.  Contrast this with the glazed over eyes as we talk about finding the right language to list competencies and all the related skills, abilities and knowledge.  Lists are not as exciting as freeform creative thinking.

But here’s the thing:  if we don’t really name the specific competencies with their attendant skills, knowledge, abilities and behaviors – we risk wasting our students’ time, and in this economic environment, we have a moral obligation to maximize learning opportunities.  Don’t misunderstand me, I believe that our graduates finish our program with the right set of competencies – my thoughts today are about the means.  Are we (by we I mean all liberal rabbinical schools) helping our students to attain the necessary competencies in the most responsible fashion?  Do we have hoops to jump through that are now obsolete?  Are we focusing too much on requiring courses rather than requiring competencies?

Recently, John Cavanaugh, presented an address to one of the higher education accrediting organizations.  His talk was published in Inside Higher Ed

Here is a rather long excerpt from his essay:

Imagine yourself emerging from the Way Back Machine in London, England. It’s 1526. Henry VIII is on the throne. You furtively duck into a shop, and quickly head to the back room. You’ve come to buy an English translation of the New Testament. The mere possession of this book is punishable by death.

In the 1520s, having open access to books (knowledge) was a dangerous game. It threatened the establishment. It meant that ordinary people could see for themselves what the elite had guarded so closely.

Enter Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, who commissioned the publication of the “Great Bible,” in English, making it available to every church where it was chained to the pulpit to ensure it was accessible and didn’t “disappear.” While the publisher paid for this access with his life, in three short years readers were provided so that everyone, even the illiterate, could hear the Word of God proclaimed in their native English.

Fast-forward 472 years. You’re a college student. You’ve taken advantage of some amazing opportunities in the online world. You’ve listened to Nobel laureates discuss the Eurozone crisis and explain how current difficulties relate (or not) to classical theories of economics. You’ve worked through the underlying physics and chemistry for nearly every episode of "MythBusters." You regularly watch the TED lectures. And you’ve even taken courses from the Open Learning Initiativeand from OpenCourseWareat MIT. Now you want the academic credit for those forms of learning.

Although you won’t actually be burned at the stake as Cranmer was, you have a very good chance of experiencing the modern version of this torture because it is equally threatening to the elite. It goes something like this.

First, you’ll be asked to produce the sacred document, otherwise known as a transcript, indicating that you officially took the course. No transcript you say? Sorry — your learning is then considered “illegitimate,” and you’re then often cast out into the night where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth as you stumble back to the very beginning of college to start over…

Vu Déjà 

Higher education is facing the very situation that confronted our colleagues in the P-12 world when home schooling threatened the world order. Initially considered a fringe activity of substandard quality, the sector figured out that if appropriate standards (i.e., learning outcomes) were agreed upon and stated clearly, it didn’t really matter what path students took to get to the knowledge destination.

… We need to create a higher educational system that embraces competency-based achievement, realign the milestones by which we gauge increasing levels of knowledge/competence, and redefine degrees on this basis…

Amen to Dr. Cavanaugh!  And in fact this is a direction that we are exploring at RRC.  Each student who enters into our rabbinical program comes with a unique set of skills, experiences, and knowledge.  Of course students can petition to exempt out of a course if they can provide the necessary proof of equivalent study or experience; but one or two course exemptions from among several dozen courses is not significant.  By moving to a competency-based system rather than a requirements-based system, we enable our students to tailor their learning to their needs, to redress areas of weakness and to fly with their strengths!

Happy Hanukkah!