The impact of Jewish education on the moral reasoning of Jewish high school students: An exploratory study

Jewish education has always included the teaching of morals and values. Most Jewish parents have sought Jewish education for their children within the congregational, supplementary school setting. Today, Jewish parents are considering other options to provide this form of education. They are looking toward the day school as a means of providing an extensive Jewish education, which means an education based on Jewish morals and values. This study looks at the Jewish education of two groups of mainly Conservative Jewish high school students, one group that attends a communal day high school and the other an after-school congregational supplementary school. Both of these schools would be considered excellent within the criteria of "effective school" research. The day school chosen is one of the largest communal high schools in the country, with an ever-increasing enrollment and one of the highest four-year college acceptance rates. Retention numbers is the significant criterion for excellence within the after-school educational system, and the supplementary school chosen has a retention rate of more seventy-five percent for the high school program. The Defining Issues Test (DIT) was administered to both groups of students within the school setting to determine if Jewish education affected their moral reasoning. The assumption was made that the more Jewish education a student had acquired, the greater the opportunity for morals and values to be instilled in that teenager. In addition to the DIT, the students were administered a questionnaire named by the researcher, the Level of Jewish Observance (LJO). The results of the DIT were used to compare the moral reasoning of the two groups of students, and the scored results of the questionnaire were analyzed to test for the influence of religiosity on the moral reasoning of the two groups. Although the results of the statistical analysis showed little significant difference between the two groups of students based on their moral reasoning, differences were seen in the results of the religiosity scores of the questionnaire. While both groups of students had above average scores on the LJO, the day school students did score higher on this religiosity test. The Jewish identity of both groups of students was compared; both groups showed a strong Jewish identity.