| This study calls into question current efforts within Modern Orthodox Jewish education to integrate religious and secular studies. Framed by scholarship in schooling and literacy as cultural production as well as multiple perspectives on classroom discourse, this study examined English and Bible (Humash) classes as windows into the two worlds of a Modern Orthodox yeshiva high school.;Analysis of classroom talk showed marked differences between the two subjects. Differences related to situated meanings of specific words, references to classroom participants, expansiveness of teacher talk, acknowledgment of student interpretation, treatment of heteroglossic intrusions, and cultural models of teaching and learning. Interview data identified educational objectives, the use of the interpretive tradition, and the tone of disagreement as additional distinctions between the subjects and suggested links to broader tensions within the school and within Modern Orthodoxy. Data on both micro and macro levels suggested that English was grounded in an autonomy-based Discourse and Humash was grounded in an authority-based Discourse.;School participants tended to experience these Discourses primarily as independent entities, but negotiation was required when problematic topics such as homosexuality arose or when English teachers attempted to teach parts of the Bible as literature. Students insisted on open-mindedness about the "outside world" but exhibited discomfort about studying the Bible as literature. Humash teachers saw exposure to problematic topics as a way of inoculating students against future challenges to faith, not as a practice valuable in its own right, as English teachers viewed it. The reaction of Humash teachers to the Bible-as-literature was mixed.;Several broad themes emerged from this study. First, different classroom practices seemed suited to the different world views of Humash and English teachers. Second, students had developed fluency in both Discourses. Third, teachers were largely unaware of the ideological ramifications of activity in their classrooms. And finally, students were grappling with both worlds and arriving at their own hybridizations. This study recommends "counterpoise," programming for meta-knowledge in which school members confront and openly discuss the distinctions between their Discourses. |
