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Character Growth and JewishEducationJulius B. Mallera Director of Educational Research , Union of AmericanHebrew CongregationsPublished online: 24 May 2006.

To cite this article: Julius B. Maller (1930) Character Growth and Jewish Education, ReligiousEducation: The official journal of the Religious Education Association, 25:7, 627-630, DOI:10.1080/0034408300250704

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Character Growth and Jewish EducationJULIUS B. MALLER

Director of Educational Research,Union of American Hebrew Congregations

THE PURPOSE of this paper is topresent the results of a study con-

cerning the relationship between Jewishreligious education and character devel-opment. It will not deal with the aimsof the Jewish school and its ideals ofcharacter building, nor will it attempt toset up comparisons between Jewish andnon-Jewish children on various aspectsof behavior. It will only bring togetherthe results of research on the problem ofwhether Jewish education is associatedwith or accompanied by some form ofcharacter growth.

The achievement in character educa-tion of a given group may express itselfin one or more of three different mani-festations : to know what is right andwrong; to do what is right; and not todo what is wrong.

The investigation into the effective-ness of Jewish education upon charactereducation followed these three channelsof inquiry:

(1) Does the Jewish educator suc-ceed in imparting desirable informationconcerning socially accepted rules andtraditions, knowledge of cause and ef-fect, and the consequences that followgiven acts? Although knowledge of theright does not always lead to right be-havior, the former is prerequisite for anyproper, self-directed activity.

(2) Does Jewish education lead topositive habits of -honesty, loyalty andhelpfulness? Do Jewish children receiv-ing religious education display higher

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degrees of honesty and co-operation thando Jewish children not receiving sucheducation ?

(3) Is Jewish religious education ef-fective in discouraging undesirable habitsof deceit and selfishness? Do Jewishchildren with a religious education getthemselves into difficulties, because of de-linquent behavior, as frequently as dothose without religious education?

This paper will present one part ofour findings.

SOURCES OF INFORMATION

The source material for this investi-gation consisted of the following: the rec-ords of the Character Education Inquiry,which was conducted at Teachers Col-lege, Columbia University, under theauspices of the Institute of Social andReligious Research; a series of tests ad-ministered by the present writer in anumber of public schools in New YorkCity; the records of the Children's Courtsof New York City.

EXTENT OF JEWISH EDUCATION

Records concerning attendance at re-ligious schools were obtained for 5,613children of grades IV to VIII in elevenpublic schools of New York City. Theywere asked whether they were receivingany religious education, the name of thereligious school and, in case of privateinstruction, the name of the teacher.Schools in which the questionnaires weredistributed are located in various parts ofManhattan, Bronx and Brooklyn.

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628 R E L I G I O U S E D U C A T I O N

Of the total number of Jewish childrenquestioned, 44.5 per cent said that theywere at that time receiving some form ofreligious education. Among the others,10.82 per cent indicated that they hadreceived some form of Jewish educationbefore but discontinued it (at the timethe questionnaire was filled out). Theper cent of Jewish children of grades IVto VIII with some form of Jewish train-ing was 37.2 for the girls, 69.6 for theboys and 55.32 for the total. If this pro-portion is representative of the extent ofJewish education in New York City, then'some 184,250 of the total of 335,000 Jew-ish children of school age in that city aregetting some form of Jewish education.

HONESTY AND JEWISH EDUCATIONThe Character Education Inquiry1 ad-

ministered a series of honesty tests in fiveNew York schools located in predom-inantly Jewish neighborhoods. Amongother questions, the children were askedwhether they were attending religiousschool and, if so, to give the name of theschool. Where religious instruction wasreceived at home, they were asked forthe name of the instructor.

In one out of the five schools, the rec-ords were available only for the eighthgrade, and the percentage of childrenwithout any religious instruction was sosmall that no comparison was deemedwarranted. In the other four schools, the

1. The present writer was responsible for assem-bling the data on Hebrew schools reported in Studiesin Deceit, by Hartshorne and May.

deception scores of those receiving relig-ious education were compared with thosereceiving no religious education. Thecomparison is presented in Table I.

This table gives the number of Jewishchildren tested, the number and percent-age receiving religious instruction, theaverage deception ratio of those with re-ligious education (/?), those with no re-ligious education (NR), and the total.In each of the four schools, the R groupwas less deceptive than the NR group.

Among the R group, there were quitea number of children who received theirreligious education at home or privately.Those who gave the name of a Hebrewschool were selected for special study.The average deception score of this groupwas 45.0, as compared with 50.2 of thosereceiving no religious education. Thisdifference of 5.2 points was 2.3 its stand-ard error. In terms of probability, thechances are ninety-nine in one hundredthat there was a difference in deceptionscore in favor of the Hebrew schoolgroup.

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN HEBREWSCHOOLS

Five Hebrew schools were mentionedfrequently enough to warrant specialstudy. The average deception scoreswere computed for each of the fiveschools. Those averages differed fromone another to a greater extent than didthe averages of the different secularschools. The correlation between decep-

TABLE IDECEPTION SCORES OF JEWISH CHILDREN W I T H AND WITHOUT RELIGIOUS

SchoolABCD

ChildrenTested

599457618230

EDUCATION

NumberReligiousEducation

229174213114

Per CentReligiousEducation

38382849

Average DeceptionR

48.558.037.850.1

NR50.258.341.251.8

Both50.158.540.151.0

Total 1,904 730 38 48.5 50.2 49.9

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CHARACTER GROWTH AND JEWISH EDUCATION 629

tion and length of attendance was deter-mined for each of the five religiousschools. In three schools, the correla-tions were negative, indicating decreaseddeception with increased attendance. Intwo of the schools, however, the corre-lation was reversed. The latter twoschools were among the poorest of thefree schools located in an under-privilegedneighborhood.

Thus, it seems that attendance at a re-ligious school is associated with a child'shabits of honesty and deception. The na-ture of the relationship, however, de-pends greatly upon the type of schooland the prevailing morale. It should benoted that the variation of deceptionscores was found to decrease with lengthof attendance in each of the schools. Thestandard deviation of the deception scoresof second year pupils was consistentlysmaller than that of first year pupils ineach of the Hebrew schools. Whateverthe influence of the school, whether posi-tive or negative, it tends to make the chil-dren more alike in respect to behaviorinvolving honesty.

TESTING A HOMOGENEOUS GROUPThe population tested by the Character

Education Inquiry was composed of chil-dren coming from different schools, dif-ferent grades, different social levels. Theydiffered in age, in intelligence, and thosewho received religious instruction dif-fered in type of instruction received.

In order to determine the correlationbetween Jewish religious instruction andhonesty, it was necessary to obtain equiv-alent groups of the same school and gradeand the same environment. Mr. HermanJacobs, director of a community center in

Brooklyn, succeeded in isolating two suchlarge groups of Jewish children, all ofwhom were in the eighth grade of oneelementary school. They lived in thesame neighborhood and in practically thesame environment. These groups weregiven a battery of honesty tests, consist-ing of ten different tests and one hundredopportunities for deception. The numberof tests on which a child cheated, as wellas the number of deception opportunitiesaccepted, was recorded for each child.Each child attending religious school wasmatched against one like him in all otherrespects but without religious instruction.The results are presented in Table II.

This table indicates that the group re-ceiving religious instruction was less de-ceptive than the group which was equiva-lent but without any religious education.

The average number of types of decep-tion, as well as the number of deceptionopportunities accepted, was lower for theformer group. The difference in totalscores of nineteen points was 4.1 timesthe S.D. of the difference, indicatingthat the difference was statistically sig-nificant. As the two groups were equiva-lent in other respects, it is reasonable toconsider the difference in deception as aresult of attendance at religious school.

In addition to the seventy-two childrenattending a Hebrew weekday school,there was a small group of Jewish chil-dren attending a Sunday school. It isinteresting to note that the latter groupscored somewhat higher in honesty thanthe former. Whether this is the resultof the greater emphasis upon religiousmatters in the Sunday school, or whetherit is the result of selection, is still to beascertained.

TABLE II

DECEPTION SCORES OF EQUIVALENT GROUPS

Number'Attending Hebrew School 72Attending No Hebrew School 72

Deception ScoresTests Opportunities3.2 375.9 56

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630 RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

JEWISH EDUCATION AND THE PROBLEMOF DELINQUENCY

The extent of juvenile delinquency ina community, the number of youngstersarraigned before the children's court, is,in a sense, a measure of the effectivenessof religious education in the broadersense of the term.

Does Jewish education affect the pro-portion of Jewish young delinquents?The writer is just completing a survey ofthe number and causes of arraignmentof Jewish boys before the children'scourts of New York City for the years1909-1929. More than a quarter of amillion boys (271,890) were arraignedbefore the children's courts of New YorkCity in the last twenty years. Some 21per cent of them come from Jewishhomes. The percentage of Jewish ar-raignments, however, decreased from 30per cent in the year 1909 to 14 per cent in1929. Dividing these twenty years intofour periods of five years each, we foundthe following percentages of Jewish ar-raignments for each period:

Proportionof Jewish

, Period Delinquents1909-1913 24%1914-1918 22%1919-1923 21%1924-1928 18%1929- 14%

It is evident, then, that there was a

gradual decrease in proportion of Jewishjuvenile delinquency in New York City,in spite of the relative increase of theJewish population in that city. This, ofcourse, may be largely due to improvedeconomic and social conditions, but therecan be no doubt that the untiring activi-ties of the Jewish educational agenciesfor the last two decades have contributedtheir share in this phase of charactergrowth of the Jewish child.

SUMMARY

Character education of the Jewish childis not to be restricted to the Jewish re-ligious school. It will be effective if thehome win co-operate with the religiousschool, if the parents will constantly setexamples of honesty, helpfulness, andfair play. It will be still more effectiveif social organizations will co-operate inhelping to remedy the causes of unadjust-ment that lead to undesirable behavior.

It is only in such a wholesome atmos-phere that the religious school, Christianor Jewish, will become a real factor inthe child's education for life. After thepupils will have long forgotten the names,dates and facts learned in the religiousschool, the acquired habits will continueto influence their own behavior. It willhelp them live a more purposeful, morecreative life as useful citizens of theircommunity and as living members oftheir group.

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