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One of the great things about my work at the Lippman Kanfer Institute is that I get paid to read. Well, not literally, of course. But, since the mission of the Institute is to promote worthwhile innovation that ensures that Jewish education remains relevant and effective in a rapidly changing world, there’s a lot to keep up with. The recently ended summer (sigh) was particularly filled with reading because the Lippman Kanfer Institute has launched an ambitious new initiative aimed at accelerating the pace of large-scale systemic change in Jewish education, and there’s a lot we need to learn if we hope to be successful.

I can’t possibly do even partial justice to the full list of thought provoking books I had the privilege of reading over the past three months. (For those interested, I’ve appended a bibliography.) It was an eclectic collection, ranging from a new “guided tour” of the science of complexity—a science that underlies much new thinking about organizational and social change—to two illuminating books about complementary cutting edge endeavors taking place to revitalize Jewish learning, spirituality, and community, one (Empowered Judaism) on the independent minyan movement and one (Sacred Strategies) on visionary congregations. It also included a slew of books on change—why we need it and how to make it—in a wide range of different contexts, from personal life to business to social justice to foreign policy.

Since I can’t write meaningfully about all of these books, I’ll focus only on one that I just finished and that serves as a fitting capstone to my summer’s literary journey. It’s a book entitled Education Nation: Six Leading Edges of Innovation in our Schools, by Milton Chen, senior fellow and executive director emeritus at the George Lucas Educational Foundation (GLEF). GLEF is the creator of a website called Edutopia, which chronicles innovative activity in education, especially related to the use of technology. In Education Nation, Chen “curates” a host of examples of creative educational programs from among those documented over the years by Edutopia to make the case for redesigning education in America around six “edges,” new ways of thinking and doing learning and teaching that have emerged at the edges of the traditional system, but are now beginning to penetrate more deeply into the core of American education. These “edges,” Chen argues, show us what education can be and needs to be in the 21^st century. (The concept of pulling ideas and innovation from the “edges” is the centerpiece of another book I highly recommend, The Power of Pull, by John Hagel III, John Seely Brown, and Lang Davison. Probably not coincidentally, they and Chen all work in the Bay Area, one of America’s hotbeds of innovation.)

The six edges that Chen describes are:

1. the Thinking Edge—changing how we think about learning to see it as experiential, expressive, energetic, even ecstatic, and within the capacity of all


2. the Curriculum Edge—emphasizing project-based and other forms of real-world learning and authentic assessment


3. the Technology Edge—taking full advantage of the enormous power that technology holds to expand, personalize, and universalize learning


4. the Time / Place Edge—bringing the classroom and the wider world together to enable learning anytime and anywhere


5. the Co-teaching Edge—encouraging teachers, other experts, and parents to collaborate as co-educators


6. the Youth Edge—recognizing the talents of young people and empowering them to shape their own learning, taking advantage of their status as “digital natives,” and as teachers of their teachers.

What these six edges together make possible—and Chen’s book is filled with inspiring stories of these edges in action—is education that is both student-centered and highly rigorous. Most of all, it’s education that is impactful, that engages learners deeply and actively in the educational process and that leaves them with a positive sense of and the knowledge and skills to actualize their potential as creative and responsible citizens.

If you detect parallels with many of the themes that the Lippman Kanfer Institute and JESNA have been advocating for as central to redesigning Jewish education for the 21^st century, you’re not alone. The big question, of course, is how we get from here to there: how can we make the kinds of changes Chen describes and that are needed to produce consistently attractive, accessible, impactful Jewish learning? Here, I believe, there is an encouraging consensus of thinking among a large number of the authors I encountered this summer (including Chen). In today’s world, broad-scale change comes not from top down dictates or strategic plans, but from the evolving and inter-connected efforts of many individuals and groups who seek out new and better ways of doing things, share these, and gradually diffuse them throughout large systems. Successful change, whether in education or environmentalism, requires a percolating mix of vision, dedication, experimentation, communication, capacity-building and collaboration.

Can we use these approaches to create a “Jewish education nation” over the next ten years? My reading this summer convinces me that we can. And, the start of a new year seems an excellent time to get to work.

Let’s hear your thoughts:

Do you think that the “edges” that Chen provides apply to Jewish Education? And if so, how?