May 2003
Volume 16, Number 5
Scott Sokol is director of the Jewish Music Institute and Jewish special education and an adjunct associate professor of Jewish music and educational psychology at Hebrew College. Previously, he was a research scientist at Massachusetts General Hospital and a professor in cognitive neuropsychology at Harvard Medical School.
Like most members of APS, I consider myself a scientist whose field of research lies within psychology, in my case cognitive neuropsychology. My graduate training at Johns Hopkins invested me (or so I hope) with a logical and systematic approach to the study of cognition with critical reasoning skills that have helped ground me across a wide range of professional activities.
After earning my PhD, I moved to a dual-track position as a research scientist at Massachusetts General Hospital and a professor at Harvard Medical School. I was named a Fellow of APS shortly thereafter, presumably in acknowledgment of a reasonably successful scientific career to that point, and with the expectation for more of the same in the future. Those expectations notwithstanding, my career soon took several unexpected turns, and I now find myself in the position of explaining to friends and colleagues (including the present audience) how a psychological scientist ended up working as a cantor and a special educator.
As a cognitive neuropsychologist, the majority of my research has been informed by the performance of brain-damaged subjects, including patients who had suffered strokes, head injury, and dementia, and later extended to children with learning disabilities. At some point, it occurred to me that the same patients who had granted me unique insight into cognitive processes might themselves benefit from those insights, and more generally from the emerging paradigm of cognitive neuropsychology as it might be applied to the clinic. I began conducting neuropsychological assessments as an intern, eventually earning a license as a clinical neuropsychologist.
I imagine some of my former professors were not too keen on my move away from basic research, but they were soon to be more greatly disappointed when it appeared that I would give up psychology altogether to become a clergyman. That chapter of my life falls a bit outside the scope of this article. However, for the sake of complete disclosure I will simply say that I took a sabbatical from full-time work as a psychologist and went back to school to study for the cantorate. (For those unfamiliar with this profession, cantors are synagogue professionals whose primary responsibilities include chanting the liturgy and instructing the community in Jewish music.) I maintained a part-time position at MGH during my cantorial schooling, and worked in both careers for a time after my ordination.
About three years ago, however, I left my positions at MGH and HMS to devote myself more fully to the cantorate. At the same time, I helped to begin, and ultimately to direct, an academic program in Jewish Special Education at Hebrew College in Boston. This program trains special educators who plan to teach in Jewish day schools or supplementary religious schools. The curriculum includes general coursework that one would find in any Special Education program (e.g., assessment), as well as coursework specifically geared to the Jewish environment (e.g., developmental reading for those learning Hebrew as a second language). The program attempts to fill a void in the Jewish community, training educators who are able to work with children with cognitive and behavioral disabilities.
One might find it curious that a director of a special education program never took a single course in special education. And yet, I would argue that my scientific training as a cognitive neuropsychologist combined with my clinical training in assessment have actually left me somewhat uniquely qualified for the position. The information-processing paradigm in which I was inculcated offers a great deal to the science and practice of special education. Similarly, the real-world challenges of teaching children with special needs provide important reality-checks to the theoretician and laboratory-empiricist alike.
Within an academic environment that includes only one other psychologist (who primarily teaches codes of Jewish law), I do find myself somewhat isolated from the sort of scientific discourse and collegial interactions that many in more traditional positions take for granted. Nonetheless, I believe that my colleagues and students appreciate the unique contribution that scientific psychology offers into human learning and behavior. Indeed, were I to rewind to the beginning of my graduate training knowing where I would ultimately end up, I can honestly say that I wouldn't change a thing.
