Why is education at Columbia so dull, despite the prestige of the degree—while learning in a yeshiva felt richly rewarding?

An unexpected realization dawned on me toward the end of my first semester at Columbia University. For months, I had been noticing certain oddities in seminar discussions, especially in my core literature class. Sporadically, a fellow student would make a stray, weird comment—confusing one central character with another, or misunderstanding key moments in the plot. They might mistake Hector for Agamemnon, or casually forget that Dulcinea del Toboso was of less noble lineage than Don Quixote claimed. These comments would be followed by awkward pauses, before the discussion resumed as normal.

In some classes, professors started having us read key passages of the text together, either aloud or during quiet in-class reading time. I joined them, at first imagining that a second read was a deeper read. Asked to analyze together, I might notice that my group partner had no understanding of Descartes’ ontological argument. I tried to ignore it, so as not to seem unkind.

As our final exam neared, my classmates’ study habits came into sharp relief: They seemed to be learning the material from scratch, scrambling to flip through entire swaths of the Western literary canon in a single week. It was then that I understood that, for the past few months, I had been participating in a show class, in which I was one of the only students who actually bothered to read any of the books. Apparently, the opportunity to explore the supposedly foundational texts of Western civilization didn’t matter as deeply to my peers as I had expected.

I was slow on the uptake for a specific reason. Like many modern Orthodox American Jews, I attended a gap year in Israel between high school and college. The particular program I attended—Yeshivat Har Etzion—is known for intellectually rigorous traditional Talmud study. It was my first experience with higher learning, in which I and a cohort of like-minded peers spent our days immersed in the demanding study of texts, in this case the Talmud and its commentaries. Experiencing these two vastly disparate educational cultures one after another left me wondering what it was that brought about the baffling divergence between one culture that treated learning as the ultimate sacred endeavor and another that treated it as a boring formality.

Why had the yeshiva brilliantly succeeded where the university had so pathetically failed? I believe that one of the most pivotal causes of this split is the difference between what I term a “pedagogy of pride” and a “pedagogy of shame.” Let me explain.

On a typical day at the yeshiva, we would show up to class having already spent a number of hours perusing and analyzing the material among ourselves. We knew that if we had not studiously read the relevant Talmudic passages and commentaries in advance, we would be completely unable to follow the lecture. So as we sat in the classroom and waited for our rebbe, or teacher, to arrive, in addition to the usual small talk, my friends and I would often discuss the relevant questions that were on our minds. We had read that Maimonides, a 12th-century Egyptian Talmudist, maintained that the Torah requires all testimony to be received orally, as the verse states, “at the mouth of two witnesses… shall the matter be established.” But how would he resolve the objection raised by Nachmanides, a 13th-century Spanish sage, who highlighted that the Torah clearly allows for written testimony when it legislates divorce to be achieved through the use of a written document alone?

Our rebbe would usually enter the classroom a few minutes after us, with his arms full of the texts he would need for the lecture. Today he managed to carry several large volumes of the Talmud along with a copy of Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah, Nachmanides’ commentaries, and a well-used edition of collected essays written by his great-great-grandfather, the 19th-century Lithuanian Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchik. When our rebbe entered the room, we briefly stood from our chairs, to show our respect for his scholarship and position.

The nearly two-hour lecture, punctuated by student questions, covered a number of interlocking topics, including the nature of testimony in Jewish law and general methods and principles of exegesis. Does testimony merely convey information, or does it require that the witnesses personally represent their testimony before God? How literally must we interpret the phrase “at the mouth of two witnesses”?

Finally, we began to discuss Nachmanides’ question. After reading the relevant texts, and explaining a solution proposed by Rabbi Soloveitchik, our rebbe proposed his own, novel approach to this difficulty: Maimonides’ disqualification of written testimony referred only to monetary matters, such as testimony about a loan or an acquisition of property; a bill of divorce, which is primarily a personal, religious document rather than a formal and legal bill, does not require the same standards of testimony.

After the lecture, my peers and I continued the conversation, comparing notes, debating our rebbe’s approach, and developing our own ideas. We would also be sure to find time in the evenings and late nights to explore topics outside of our general curriculum, studying among other things the great works of Jewish philosophy, poetry and mysticism.

What motivated us to labor so tirelessly to understand these arcane and complex subjects? There were no grades given at the yeshiva, and our future careers would hardly be determined by our understanding of the laws of Jewish divorce. So why did we sit at the edges of our seats to be sure to hear every word our rebbe spoke?

The yeshiva succeeded in cultivating a culture of erudition and studiousness in its students in large part because they taught their students to be proud of the inherited tradition which they were studying. We were told that we were studying the uniquely special wisdom of the Torah which was divinely gifted to us and our ancestors. We learned how the Talmudic sages of ages past endured unbearable persecutions, even death, in order to preserve and study the holy Torah and its exegetical tradition. We were taught that these sages, whose words we would be painstakingly poring over, were among the greatest geniuses and most pious men who ever walked the earth, and that their works contain crucial lessons which remain relevant today.

Soon after we arrived at the yeshiva, our rebbe gave a brief speech explaining why we would be studying the Talmud. “The Torah,” he explained, “is the revealed word of the living God. We study it, and the Talmud which extends from it, not only because it is a singular wellspring of eternal truth, but also because it connects us to a higher power and a higher purpose.” We could feel the genuine love and joy our teachers felt toward their studies, and it inspired us every day to put in the necessary effort in pursuit of the ancient wisdom. This educational experience is what I call a “pedagogy of pride,” and I saw it to be highly effective in action.

The pedagogical culture I encountered at Columbia was entirely different. Officially, Columbia prides itself on its century-old core curriculum, a series of classes every student is required to take which present an overview of the best works of the Western canon. But when I actually entered Columbia’s classrooms, I found that this outward pride was hollow. In fact, it camouflaged a much deeper, pervasive shame which most Columbians felt about their inherited intellectual and artistic traditions.

On more than one occasion—in fact, quite regularly—a professor of a core curriculum course, be it focused on literature, philosophy, music or art, would be sure to note in his or her introductory lecture that, in truth, there was nothing special about the Western canon’s approach to the topic. Their spiel would include some version of the following disclaimer: “If I had it my way, we would study African art, Eastern philosophy, or Hispanic literature. Unfortunately, due to oppressive constraints imposed upon us by prejudiced alumni and agenda-based donors, we will have to study the works of these mostly irrelevant dead white men instead.”

For the next several months, as we made our way through the greatest works Western civilization has ever produced, we would be periodically reminded that the Western canon was built upon fundamentally bigoted principles. When we were taught about democracy in Athens, our professor emphasized that, like America’s democracy today, the Athenian democratic ideals were far from realized: Women were not given the opportunity to vote, and the Parthenon was built using slave labor. I recall my surprise when, as we studied Rembrandt, our assigned readings focused on exploring how the Dutch master benefited from his homeland’s colonialist ambitions. At every possible juncture, the great thinkers and artists of our syllabi were put on trial, and they were always convicted.

These comments were not limited to judgments of individual artists and philosophers. Over and over again, we were told how terrible it was that the Western canon as a whole, and seemingly as a condition of its being, silenced the voices of women and minorities, and included only those of European, Christian, heterosexual men. Where such verbal grievances proved insufficient, the very few premodern female or minority artists who could be excavated from the historical record were messily grafted onto our syllabi. We studied Sofonisba instead of da Vinci, fragments of Saffo rather than Sophocles, Christine de Pizan in place of Spinoza; such substitutions were celebrated as a reparative maneuver and therefore as a necessary improvement over the thinkers and artists who had been replaced. This practice was always increasing—in the 2024 literature humanities, Cervantes and Milton were replaced by Marie de France and Ibn ‘Arabi.

The guilt expressed by our professors and administrators for the core’s outdated and oppressive values rubbed off on the students, who were understandably unexcited to study the texts and works of a culture they were taught to be ashamed of. As I learned during that first finals season of my freshman year, my fellow Columbians did not spend their days diligently searching for the truth and beauty contained in the texts they had been assigned to read. We did not debate the subtleties of the great works late into the night. Even in my seminars, which graded students on participation, our conversations lacked substance.

My friends showed up to class each day to preserve their GPA, not to uncover truths about the world—and it showed. After being shown the faults of each of the great thinkers of the West, my friends showed little respect for their ideas. If a particular claim in the text did not resonate, it was dismissed rather than grappled with. “Isn’t it silly,” a student might remark, “that Augustine makes such a big deal out of a few stolen pears?” This was the fruit of the “pedagogy of shame” at its finest: a cohort of students uninterested in and repulsed by the values and creations of the culture they were supposedly being educated to join.

To be clear, it is surely deplorable by any modern standard that the Athenians benefited from slave labor and denied rights to women. It is unfortunate that, historically, women were not provided with the resources necessary to thrive as artists. Yet the question that interests me from an educational standpoint is whether the faults of our civilization should be the main focus of our educational programming, or treated as unfortunate context. During my time at Columbia, I observed the former. Yet the latter approach, which is akin to what I found at the yeshiva, seems far more effective at nurturing a love of wisdom among students. An obsession with the faults of a canon takes a great toll on students’ willingness to study it. Who would reasonably be excited to study the greatest works of a civilization defined by the greatest evils it has committed? Why admire the artistry of imperialists and racists?

The truth is that many of the objections raised against Western culture can also appear to plague the study of rabbinics. The Torah and the Talmud both permit certain forms of slavery, and differentiate the status of men and women in ways that many have considered to be discriminatory or sexist. These facts were hardly kept secret from us at the yeshiva; we were aware of them, and discussed them, trying to square our love for the Torah with some of the ways it might appear to diverge from our modern sensibilities. Crucially, these potential problems with the Torah were never the focus of our study. They were background noises and subjects for periodic contextualizing discussions. The yeshiva’s larger philosophy was always crystal clear: The Torah is a fountain of wisdom, and richly rewards those who study it. This approach, very different from Columbia’s, encouraged students to develop a deep love for their study, and resulted in a culture of learning which the university regrettably lacked.

With all of its flaws, the Western canon has played an essential role in uplifting humankind from its bestial state and preserving our liberty, morality and respect for divinity. It forms the collection of texts which best capture the human condition, our joys, our pangs and our quest for meaning. It contains some of the best things that have been thought and said in our short time on this planet. Ignoring the unique good present in our inherited tradition is not only a dangerously pessimistic presentation of reality, but also a massive pedagogical blunder, which spells the end of a tradition—just as the love of study and a culture of learning promise meaning and continuity, even in cases when the past falls short.

Shai Goldman is a software engineer based in New York City. He spent three years studying Talmud at Yeshivat Har Etzion in Alon Shvut before going on to receive his bachelor’s from Columbia University in 2024. He is the author of “Poems on the Parsha.”