| Chapter 1: | Introduction |
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Thus, while the Mamlachti express values as human values, they evaluate popular-culture messages in reference to the human values taught. In turn, the Tali secular express their values as pluralistic Jewish values—pluralistic in the sense that they draw from all Jewish movements—and approach conflicting Internet messages from a broader pluralistic framework than the Mamlachti-Dati do. Thus, the Mamlachti-Dati, who teach Jewish values from an Orthodox point of view, evaluate conflicting messages from a traditional Orthodox perspective.
However, of those educators interviewed from each stream—with few exceptions—based on the specific values taught, each expressed trust in his or her students and his or her own system’s teaching approach. The consensus was that the students would make correct decisions within the value systems taught, think critically according to those values, and reject those messages that contradict their values. While Mamlachti-Dati educators want their students to reject popular-culture messages that conflict with religious Jewish values, it is also the desire of the Tali teachers that their students exclude messages that conflict with pluralistic Jewish values, just as the Mamlachti secular teachers hope that their students discard those messages that conflict with humanistic values.
This confidence in their methods and their students has opened the door for Israeli educators to provide additional sources of information from the outside world. The opportunities to draw these additional resources through the Internet have created challenges for teachers in deciding how to incorporate this new technology into their conventional style of teaching. Thus, while many messages are available to the students through the Internet via the various popular-culture mediums such as books, music, videos, television, and films, the schools, nonetheless, routinely controlled the students’ Web browsing.