Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, Rebbe of Piasczeno, in 1932 wrote this book of educational philosophy called, "Chovat Hatalmidim" ("The Student’s Obligation") in order to address the issue of young Jews leaving the yeshivot for the tempting world of modernity.His views sound remarkably similar to a current day issue:
"Today’s youth consider themselves grown up before their time ... they have come to see themselves as grown up and independent — in their opinions and in their desires — though their mind is still upside down and their desires unripe and bitter.... This trait causes harm [because] it causes the child to see any guide, teacher, or educator as a foreign overlord who has come to rule over him with a strong hand, and to strip him of his independent mind and will."
Rav Kalonimus Kalman Shapira author of Chovas Hatalmidim and Aish Kodesh (1889-1944). His father, Rav Elimelech of Grodzisk, was a direct descendant of the Magid of Kozhnitz and of the "Noam Elimelech" of Lizhensk. He was named Klonimus Kalmish after his maternal grandfather, the renowned "Maor Vashemesh."In 1905, Rav Klonimus Kalmish married Rachel Chaya Miriam, the daughter of Rav Yerachmiel Moshe of Kozhnitz. She helped him prepare his drashas and seforim, even adding pertinent insights of her own.
After the Warsaw Ghetto uprising was crushed in Nissan 1943, Rav Klonimus Kalmish was taken to the Trevaniki work camp near Lublin. Prisoners who were completely "worked out" by exhaustion and starvation were removed and sent to the Treblinka and Rav Klonimus Kalmish met his death there on 4 Cheshvan, 1944.
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