There is something deeply wrong in the Torah educational system and I don’t know how we can fix it. In 8th grade Halacha class, we started to do hilchot Chanukah. A kid complained that the KSA begins with a retelling of the Chanukah story and was like “Why do we need to read that again we know the story? Why is it even in there?” So, I somewhat derisively asked him “Where else were people supposed to read about it? In Megillat Chanukah? Masechet Sufganyot?” as I thought he was being facetious. And it lead to the class genuinely asking “yeah why is there no part of Tanach that discusses Chanukah? Why aren’t there mishnayot about Chanukah?” I ended up asking them why they thought that the Book of Maccabees etc weren’t in Tanach versus the rest, when Chanukah happened, etc and came to the realization that: None of them knew exactly how or why Tanach had been compiled. What was the difference between the sefarim in Tanach and books that had been rejected. They also didn’t really know how the Mishnah was compiled, what the Mishna was meant to be, why it wouldn’t make sense for Chanukah to be included as a result, etc. Ended up having a 45 minutes detailed discussion about all of this, what was nevuah, how many prophets there were, etc. The problem is… it’s not the class. Even if I went to Ohalei Torah or Lakewood and asked your average 8th grader, they’d probably be clueless too. Somehow they are taught those things at a very basic level when they are young, it’s basically never revisited, and they might be able to break a tosafot apart but they can’t even tell you why the Gemara came to be except in the vaguest details, who compiled it, and much less about Tosfot except that somehow they’re all Rashi’s singular grandson. Yeah, overall I don’t know how we can fix that. Rant over.