Teenagers Educated The Village Way by Chaim Peri, The World: The Values Network, 2011, ISBN 978-257-06206-5, 217 pages, $18.
By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO — In challenging numerous orthodoxies, this book is likely to make readers think and educators and psychologists re-think. Peri, longtime headmaster of the Yemin Orde school and youth village on Israel’s Mount Carmel, contends that even the most troubled teenagers, prone to acting out because of the way they were traumatized or abandoned as children, can heal and become productive, contributing members of society.
Through several generations since its founding in 1953, Yemin Orde has had an enrollment each year of 500 students–some of whom were refugees, some Israeli orphans, some wards of the court, and all of them in need of a sense of belonging and family.
Although they may rebel, teenagers seek guidance, Peri argues. But to give it to them, educators cannot simply meet students in the classroom, and then go their separate ways. They must become integral parts of their students’ lives, providing the steady, calming adult influences for which the teenagers hunger. You can bet that the educators will be tested, not once but many times, but at some point, given educators’ constant commitment, the teenagers will be able to heal their wounds, envision their futures and reinvent themselves.
Peri teaches that to find their inner peace, and to believe that they have productive futures, teenagers often need to find something in their family past that they can be proud of. If they have abusive parents, how is this possible? They can learn about their grandparents or great-grandparents, or the honorable traditions of the ethnic or religious group from which they come. Yemin Orde helps them find something in their past, however distant, that they connect to, feel proud about, and desire to build upon.
Along with a past, Yemin Orde helps sustain its students with a vision of the future. With over a half century of alumni to call upon, the school frequently brings its graduates back to campus to meet with students. Those who had hardships to overcome as children — even as Peri did with a mentally ill mother– tell their stories, tell how Yemin Orde helped them, and tell about their successes and their own families.
Students are encouraged to envision themselves on a continuum, moving from past through the present to the future. It is also suggested to them that the picture themselves standing within two circles, the smaller one “tikkun halev” — repairing the heart — and the other “tikkun olam”–repairing the world. They are taught that as they expand the circumference of one circle so too can they expand the circumference of the other. Who are they? What is their place in the world? They can see themselves as an individual within their own two circles moving along the continuum.
The Youth Village emphasizes that it is not just a school, but it is its students’ home for life. After they graduate, they are welcome to return at any time to visit, to get away, to recuperate. The association between students and Yemin Orde is a life-long one. It does not end, no more than a child who moves from his parents’ home ends his association with his parents. Yemin Orde, as a home, is a place to which students can always come back.
To emphasize the separate identities of the residential youth village and the school, the two are physically separated. A student in the youth village must get up and walk a distance to school, not simply roll out of bed and walk down a corridor to a classroom. Success at Yemin Orde is not conditioned on good grades; one can have failures in school and still be loved unconditionally at home.
Education in Peri’s view is not simply teaching things to students; it is developing ongoing relationships with them. There are rules at the school, to be sure, but if the need is strong enough, the rules may be bent, even over-ridden. There are punishments for various offenses, but they can be the subject of creative negotiation. It’s not the facts one learns in a class, or the rules that one is made to observe, that are paramount in Peri’s view; it’s the feelings that students come to have that they are safe, that they are appreciated, and that other people believe they have intrinsic value.
To develop that relationship with his students, Peri does not hide himself during the day in a central administration building, protected by a phalanx of secretaries. He often walks the campus, but even when he is at his desk, students are free to come in to see him when the need arises. If the need is great enough, they are free to interrupt him. Nor is his home on the campus a hideaway; he makes it a point to invite students in, so they can picture his reality.
Peri also involves the students in the administration of the school. If it has financial difficulties, students are as privy to this as are teachers and administrators. The students will participate in discussions how to deal with legal issues facing the school — for example, a zoning battle with the nearby artist colony of Ein Hod. They will help their fellow students fight perceived injustices. For example, there once were three students whose immigrant family was so poor, their parents lived with the students’ younger brothers and sisters in dilapidated housing. A municipal government wanted to tear down these quarters as a safety hazard, yet this would leave the family without a place to live. Yemin Orde’s student body banded together, spoke up in behalf of the distressed family, and eventually persuaded authorities to find a better solution.
Participation in life’s crises help students realize that they can have an impact on the society around them, that they are not passive objects always acted upon by others, but, rather, they can become activists in helping to determine the course of their own lives and those of others.
Such in “the village way” for educating teenagers.
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted at donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com