#gemarah

Technology has allowed education to evolve. We now have flipped classrooms, note-taking apps, and so much more. 

Yet, I feel that the standard Yeshiva beis medrash has not been the beneficiary of these advances. A talmud of the famed Volozhiner Yeshiva would feel very much at home walking into a beis medrash in the Mir or Lakewood. 

Is this intentional? Is there something sacred about learning in the same fashion as Jews have learned for  more than a millennium? 

Perhaps. But didn't the gemarah teach us that the institution of what we now have as traditional cheder school was done so to address a problem? Once upon a time every parent was knowledgeable enough to educate his son or daughter with enough of the basics of Judaism that the child was able to function in society. The academy was reserved for the elite. But as the generations degraded we were forced to send our children to learn from specially trained m'chanchim (See Bava Basra 21a). We needed 'education', Pink Floyd be damned. 

Or so the story goes. But have we stopped to ask ourselves if our current system for teaching torah is working today the way it was supposed to? 

By this I mean: You walk into the beis medrash at 9:00am (good for you!) and find your study partner. You continue learning the gemarah and commentaries of the sugya that you were in the middle of. You both approach this material possibly for the first time, trying to understand what you're reading and making sure it fits into the framework of other gemarot you've encountered in the past. You and your chavrusa dialogue on this process together, pointing out problems and searching for solutions. Perhaps you even rope another chavrusah schaf into your discussion.

Maybe the Rebbi has given out source material (ma'are mekomos) which you review to prepare for the shiur. At 11 or so the Rebbi gives a 1 hour shiur explaining discrepancies in the sugya based on the ma'are mekomos. There is some back and forth with the students as they try to both grasp the new concepts they are being exposed to while simultaneously trying to point out flaws or difficulties in the Rebbi's reasoning. All the loose ends are neatly tied up (or not). 

This process repeats itself as the class slowly plods through the mesechta, usually covering only a small portion of the work in any given 'semester'. 

Can we improve this?  

Here's what I imagine. 

Why not approach the sugya the way the internet would? Let the ma'are mekomos be a shared, editable document (or wiki). Let the Rebbi provide the audio for the shiur in advance and then spend the shiur time resolving common problems or questions. Give the talmidim the ability to tag shiurim so that they can cross-reference other sugyas. Learn a topic with everyone interested in that topic participating instead of trying force people to be interested in whatever is on the daf. Develop apps for learning, not just apps that list the information. Maybe set up a Google hangout with others learning a similar sugya anywhere across the world?

The same can be said for published chidushei torah. Why is each sefer written by one and only one person whereas an academic paper is written by several experts on a topic (generally speaking)? If the goal is l'hagdil torah v'yadira, why not share your chidushei torah for others to 'remix'? 

Personally, I intend to do exactly this once I have enough material to publish. I will post copies of my chiddushim as shared, editable documents for others to add, amend and repurpose.

L'havdil, Rashi had to wait 500 years for the Maharal to come and defend or expound one of his ideas, why can't we collapse this delay by allowing multiple people to be involved in expounding a chiddush in real time?

The most immediate benefit of adopting this perspective is to make torah more accessible to many of our youth who are becoming increasingly disenfranchised with the current system. Perhaps the "standard" beis medrash works well for some (or even many) students, by if we have the capability of providing alternatives, then let us do so.  

I believe once we are willing to entertain the possibility of 'disrupting' our traditional model there will be many more suggestions for improvement (which is what underlies the nature of my arguement). Hence I am posting these thoughts online not just to share them with others in the hopes that they will be considered and implemented, but also with the understanding that others will take these concepts to heights I never even imagined.