Shalhevet’s un-Orthodox Approach

I don’t know about you, but I am often drawn to men and women who are boldly stamped by commitment. What I like is that they pursue an idea no matter where it takes them, simply because of their belief or passion. The educators at Shalhevet High School, founded in 1992, are like that.

They have created a special place of learning that embraces the unconventional, another quality that attracts me. For example, the Modern Orthodox day school’s 175 boys and girls study together, and its headmaster of general studies, Nathan O. Reynolds, formerly provost of Harvard-Westlake, is not Jewish. Perhaps not surprisingly, more than half of Shalhevet’s students come from Conservative or Reform homes.

There’s more. The school excels in its academic program — Judaic studies mixed in with a rigorous set of classes that are designed for high achievers. It is no accident that Shalhevet’s seniors perform exceedingly well on the SAT and gravitate toward our best colleges and universities. It is almost by definition a school for elites, though the founder and guiding spirit, Dr. Jerry Friedman, does not like to use that term and is looking for ways to broaden the student body.

You may be startled to hear that Shalhevet’s founding father does not view the school’s impressive curriculum and educational concerns as its defining center. Rather, for Friedman, the heart of the school lies in its emphasis on moral development.

Normally, when I hear those words associated with an educational institution, I want to run for the hills. You may have a similar response, but stay with me for a moment. The theory actually evolved from the work of an educational philosopher at Harvard, Dr. Lawrence Kohlberg, who posited the idea that there were six sequential stages in our moral development, and that educators needed to work with children and adolescents to help them evolve toward the highest level. If nurtured and trained properly by teachers, students might grow to the point where they had acquired a sense of justice and mutual respect and an awareness that, at times, it was necessary to subordinate personal desires and needs for the good of the community.

In a way, it paralleled the work of the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget, who conducted a series of studies that demonstrated some of the intellectual and developmental steps that occurred in children. Piaget’s work was grounded in physical and measurable experiments. Kohlberg’s came out of a belief system that ultimately was not provable.

Nevertheless, Kohlberg’s theories and his passion galvanized Jerry Friedman when he first met the Harvard professor in the 1970s at his daughter’s graduation. Friedman had already built a successful real estate development company in Los Angeles, had a family, and could fairly be described as an engaged Modern Orthodox Jew. But the encounter with Kohlberg led him back to graduate school and a doctorate in education from Harvard.

To put an idea into play, to turn from theory to practice, is both exciting and approximate. Some of the finer theoretical points get blurred; and the need to prove or disprove the theory becomes less important than making the process work.

For Friedman, the process (in participatory democracy and moral development) indeed works well. He has a student body that takes its studies seriously, but also sees itself as part of a community where decisions are shared. There are two structural components built into the school that he believes enable all this to happen: the town meeting and the fairness committee.

Everyone attends the town meeting, which is scheduled one afternoon each week. All — students, teachers, staff — have a vote; all votes are equal. Students outnumber faculty, but the votes do not usually break down that way. There is discussion, argument, individual desires made known as well as school or community needs. I would hazard a guess that a good percentage of Shalhevet’s graduates will gravitate toward law, psychiatry or rabbinical studies.

The fairness committee, on the face of it, should be the student’s court of appeal against a real or perceived injustice by faculty. The committee is made up of two students from each class and one faculty member. But here, too, the student jurors tend to review cases on their merit, and find as often for a teacher as for a fellow teen.

I have a sense that one reason for Shalhevet’s high esprit de corps has to do with its home — the school is shoehorned into a rabbit warren of hallways in the Westside Jewish Community Center building on Olympic Boulevard, a few blocks east of Fairfax Avenue. It might best be described as making do by the seat of your pants. On one level, the close quarters leaves everything to be desired. On another, it helps form a bond that unites everyone.

All of that is about to change. Shalhevet will have to leave the JCC premises at the end of the school term. With a prayer and a burst of faith, Friedman has purchased a hospital building a few blocks away, at the corner of Fairfax and San Vicente for $6.8 million. He has raised $4.5 million of the purchase price and has until Feb. 15 to find the remainder.

It is clear that he will need more than a fairness committee and a town hall meeting to acquire the balance. But I have little doubt that he will find a way. — Gene Lichtenstein