The five percent non-solution

Perhaps you’ve heard of Pareto’s Principle, also known as the 80/20 rule. In its most general form, it postulates that 20 percent of any effort produces 80% of the results.

For example, diversified companies usually find that 80 percent of total sales come from just 20 percent of their products. In software development, fixing the top 20 percent of reported bugs prevents 80 percent of system errors—not because the other bugs are inconsequential, but because they are encountered less frequently.

Peter Greene, a teacher in Pennsylvania, adds a Five Percent Rule: the idea that only five percent of anything really matters. Greene writes,

Ninety-five percent of everything is unimportant baloney, crap that we humans use to torture ourselves and each other. Neckties. Eye shadow. Funny hats. Hair length. Only five percent of what we deal with is true and important and lasting. Only five percent of what we deal with is really important. Only five percent of what we deal with really, truly matters. It's what Thoreau was saying—simplify your life by getting rid of the 95 percent junk. 

Greene continues,

We can agree that a huge slice of life is wasted on inconsequential stupid stuff, and that only that small sliver, that five percent, really deserves our heart and soul and attention.

But we can’t agree on what falls within the five percent.

Greene uses this line of reasoning to argue against contemporary efforts in curriculum reform, saying that the reforms elevate the five percent of learning that one person or group might value at the expense of the five percents that others might value.

I have to dispute Greene’s implication that only five percent of curriculum matters. I concede, however, that there is a lot of room for disagreement about what elements matter, and how much each matters.

In Jewish education, there is a degree of consensus about what is important, but there is nothing close to unanimity. For centuries, Hebrew was the mainstay of the cheder, but in the twentieth century, some congregations considered it unimportant. I worked in one congregation where the teaching of Hebrew had been prohibited for the first 40 years of the congregation’s existence, and limited for the next 30.

Israel wasn’t prominent in Hebrew-school curricula until the 1960s; the first Hebrew-school textbook on Israel was published in 1957. Today, every Jewish curriculum includes Israel, but we still disagree about what to teach and when to teach it. Israeli teachers, for example, take umbrage if Israel isn’t central in every grade. 

This kind of disagreement exists in every field in the humanities and social sciences (less so in the natural sciences, where learning is more incremental). English teachers—Greene is an English teacher—can usually agree that everyone should study Shakespeare. But should everyone also read Middlemarch? Or For Whom the Bell Tolls?

I will say that the Torah is so central to Jewish life and learning that every student in a Jewish school should study it. Hebrew, whether prayer-based or modern, is helpful for participation in communal Jewish life and, at higher levels, for understanding the Torah. Similarly, ritual skills are useful in Jewish life. 

I will also say that learning to live in accord with Jewish values is more important than mastering any specific prayer or ritual. According to a survey that our school took in 2011, the parents of our students agree. We’re not trying to make our children into learned scoundrels.

What is striking, however, is that all of these subjects—Torah, Hebrew, prayer and ritual, ethics—make sense only to a student who already feels Jewish. Although study can strengthen Jewish identity, it cannot create it. 

But how does a student come to feel Jewish? Jewish life at home is the starting point; school is no substitute. The family’s participation in Jewish communal life is the next element.

Both of these are obvious. Less often cited is the family’s application of Jewish values to everyday life. Let children know that you give tzedakah (that it’s not something only for religious school) and why you give it. Explain why it is un-Jewish to participate in gossip. Make your home a model of shlom bayit (peace in the home).