Academics

A New View of Academic Excellence

The Shoshana S. Cardin School is among the many intellectually rigorous and pedagogically supportive public and private high schools you will find in Baltimore. Since opening our doors in 2003, we have continued to grow – to go from “strength to strength” as it is said in our tradition.

Like our fellow schools, our academic program is vigorously college-preparatory with plenty of individual attention. Like them, we offer a broad range of classes in the arts and sciences, from several levels of Spanish, French, and Latin, to Physics and Calculus – from AP English Literature to AP Psychology. And like them, our students read some of the great works of Western literature – from Homer and Shakespeare to Kafka and Joyce; they wrestle with the great ideas that have shaped our culture – from Socrates’ cave to Freud’s unconscious, from Jefferson’s ideals to the political philosophy and punditry of the present day.

Like those other institutions, we regularly enrich our students’ formal curriculum with art, and music, and drama. Like them, most of our graduates attend their first-choice colleges and universities.

A Unique Vision

However, the overarching vision of The Cardin School is clearly unique for we enable our students to gain an integrated perspective between the traditional disciplines, and especially between Jewish Studies and General Studies. In many ways, this means learning to see the world through educated Jewish eyes; always it implies both breadth and depth of knowledge and study, of which the following are just some examples:

We read Shelley’s Frankenstein – and compare it to the Jewish legend of the Golem from which she derived her inspiration. Then, as student-artists, we sculpt our own visions of creatures gone awry.
We read Gilgamesh – and find its echoes in the story of Noah, all the while hearing the ethical difference between these ancient flood narratives.
We contrast Hammurabi’s code with Moses’ and see the beginnings of the foundational principles of jurisprudence in the former and democracy in the latter.
We are unafraid to discuss Darwin and Genesis and give both their due.
Our students know of the stirring words of both Elizabeth Cady Stanton, but also Emma Lazarus.
We can ponder the meaning of the American Dream in a quilt made by slaves as well as in the diary of a young Jewish girl on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and use these as a springboard to discuss the similarities and differences of the African-American and Jewish American experiences.

Thus we are similar to Baltimore’s finest schools in that we nurture academic accomplishment. And yet we are different in that we foster not only a broad intellectual perspective, but a deep and lasting sense of identity.

Leslie Smith Rosen
Dean of General Studies