I remember how it was -- JR
Why Would Hasidic Parents Send Their Kids to Failing Schools?
The latest salvo in The New York Times’ ongoing exposé of the yeshiva system in New York focused on a new report issued by the New York City Department of Education that found 18 religious schools failing to meet secular education standards set by the government. The article raised some troubling questions but ignored one of the most important: Why do Hasidic parents continue to send their children to “failing schools?”
I am a former Hasid who makes a living as a tour guide and YouTuber exploring Hasidic Williamsburg, where many of these implicated Hasidic schools are located. Since I am in the neighborhood often, I have come to know the rhythm of the schools that are at the center of the ongoing controversy. Every day I watch hundreds of happy boys spill into the streets during recess and pile into buses at the end of the afternoon. I see children who are deeply cared for. I see a neighborhood with one of the lowest median ages in the country, where life revolves around raising the young. Furthermore, I see parents who pay private school tuition to send their children to these schools. So why, if they are failing, do the schools continue to burst at the seams?
There are times when parents don’t have a choice. When a couple splits, one of the parents can end up in a contractual obligation to enroll their children in specific Orthodox institutions. In other situations, there may be social pressures that leave parents with few real options. These things do happen, but I believe they represent a minority of cases.
The majority of Hasidic parents send their children to these schools because they succeed by some significant metrics. That doesn’t offset the ways in which they fall short. But in a holistic accounting that considers not only their efficiency as preparatory institutions for future workers but also the social value they provide, these so-called failing schools accomplish a great deal. Perhaps much more than an ordinary public school.
First and foremost, these schools are Talmud Torahs—institutions dedicated to the study of Jewish texts. This is what the boys spend the bulk of their time in school doing, and it is a yeshiva’s raison d’etre. According to Eli Spitzer, a Hasidic boys’ school headmaster, the Torah study is not as rigorous as yeshiva defenders often portray it. “In elementary and middle school, many hours are spent singing songs, listening to stories, and repeating material that has already been learned. In high school, meanwhile, most of the day is devoted to unstructured learning. This, for many students, consists primarily of socializing while absorbing a tiny amount of material.”
Beyond providing their formal curriculum, these schools socialize boys, helping them grow into Hasidic men. The boys spend their days cultivating a special piety, earnestness, and curiosity, as well as a strong sense of belonging. Girls, meanwhile, are socialized in modesty in schools of their own. This is not taught at a designated period during the school day but rather is the cumulative product of the culture in these yeshivas.
As a mother having once sent my son to a Satmar boys’ school, I would argue that the most important function these schools provide is the help they offer to families. Hasidic boys’ schools are in a league of their own in getting children out from under their mother’s fartich—from under her feet. Mothers tell me that the boys are in school so many hours because “boys need to study the holy Torah,” but I think there’s more to it: Unlike the girls who help run the household, families—which often live in small apartments—need the boys and men to leave daily.
Among Williamsburg Hasidic sects, the boys start school from as young as two-and-a-half years old and remain in the system until marriage. They are in school six days a week, all year round. They are bused from the family’s home and dropped back off at the door at the end of the day. They are kept busy all day without any screens. They get served multiple meals in school. They don’t usually bring home homework or need to prepare for tests. Notably, they don’t even go to school with backpacks. Everything they need is there at the school. The day gets longer as they get older: After Bar Mitzvah comes fartuks (study at dawn) and masmidim (study late in the evening). While in the secular world educators bristle at any insinuation that they are babysitters, Hasidic schools plainly take on the task of easing the burden for parents. They also seek to address students’ emotional needs.
People are so used to conflating education with economic preparation—because this is what modern education has become—that they assume that Hasidic schools seek to do the same.
It is an irony of the current debate that liberals who believe in strong social safety nets, who would balk at the assertion that a person should be judged by their wealth or career attainment, and who once celebrated the maxim made famous by Hillary Clinton, ‘It takes a village to raise a child,’ seem incapable of appreciating those same values when they come from religious communities.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, when public schools shut down, causing long-term emotional and academic damage to students, Hasidic schools continued to operate, often underground, and even after some were raided and closed by the NYPD. While these moves were controversial, the same schools that have been singled out by the Times put their necks out for their students and parents—sparing them some of the terrible losses that were suffered by students in other institutions.
But the critical reports from The New York Times and from the Department of Education don’t focus on the ways these schools serve as vital organs to Hasidic communities. Instead, they focus on what the Hasidic schools don’t do: They do not prepare the boys to be efficient workers and reliable consumers inside of mainstream, secular economic arrangements. And this is true. Hasidic schools don’t do the kind of career prep that can help students become future brand managers, corporate tax consultants, or equity administrators. It seems that in the wider world, people are so used to conflating education with economic preparation—because this is what modern education has become—that they assume that Hasidic schools seek to do the same.
Some conclude that since Hasidic boys study Torah, the goal of their schools must be to make them rabbis. As Naftuli Moster, the founder of Yaffed, an organization pushing for more government intervention in Yeshiva education, told The Washington Post, “Every boy is groomed and destined to be a rabbi of some sort.” But Hasidic schools don’t prepare children for careers as rabbis; in fact, they don’t prepare them for any career at all.
A short while after Hasidic boys marry, they often go out to work. They don’t have any formal training, and their English might be broken, but they have a community that serves as an economic network, and they are immersed in a culture of hustlers. As I’ve explored in a video on how Hasidim earn a living, the community’s local economy of mom-and-pop shops compensates for the disadvantages the boys have in not being fluent in English or traditionally prepared for careers. It remains true that poverty rates are very high, but I believe the main cause of this is the high cost of living: New York City’s Hasidim have large families, live in one of the most expensive cities in the world, and pay the price for expensive kosher food, a rich calendar of holidays and festivities, and private schools. Hasidim also live in geographically concentrated areas in order to be within walking distance of the synagogue and close to their families. This drives up property values to an incredible degree.
All of this doesn’t mean that Hasidic parents don’t have criticisms of their sons’ schools. In fact, I believe the debate over Hasidic education stems, in part, from internal frustrations. As someone who is on the periphery, parents talk to me candidly about the things that bother them. Plenty have complaints about education, as parents will have anywhere, and I hear especially about the state of “English” for boys. Parents tell me they don’t want to raise New York-born boys who struggle to speak the language of the land and who do not know the basics in math, spelling, history, and so on. But at the same time, these parents value the many things they do get from the schools, and would by no means want the good to go away.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/why-would-hasids-send-children-to-failing-schools
****************************************************Faith in higher education has hit record lows — and rightfully so
For decades, colleges have been gatekeepers to success — thanks to the perception that you need a degree to land a decent job.
But those days are numbered. Americans have finally had enough. Faith in higher education has hit a new low, according to a recent Gallup poll.
Only 36% of Americans say they have confidence in colleges and universities, with just 19% saying they have a “quite a lot” of faith and 17% “a great deal.”
That represents a 12% drop in confidence since 2018 and a staggering 21-point drop since 2015.
Between the student loan crisis and rampant campus craziness — from woke curriculum to out-of-control language policing — is it any wonder?
The American public just witnessed their president make a legally doomed attempt to wipe out billions in student debt held by millions of borrowers who learned the hard way that a degree isn’t necessarily a ticket to a high-paying job.
In fact, more than 50% of students from a third of American colleges make less than the average high school graduate.
The master’s program with the worst debt-to-earnings ratio of any major school in the country is the film program at Columbia University, a prestigious school with a $13 billion endowment. And now taxpayers — and not the university — could be on the hook for bailing them out.
Why would Americans have any faith in a system that drains students’ bank accounts and leaves many unlikely to fill them back up?
Meanwhile, schools have jacked up tuition by 748% since 1963.
And many had the nerve to charge students attending classes over Zoom the full rate during the pandemic.
And that’s not to mention the woke insanity that has taken over colleges.
Hardly a day goes by without another campus horror story capturing headlines.
Students at elite law schools like Yale have shouted down conservative speakers on campus, acting more like petulant toddlers than future lawyers and judges.
Stanford University’s IT department even released a guide for avoiding “harmful language.”
There’s no better way to damage your school’s credibility than declaring that words like “American” and “grandfather” are offensive.
And colleges have completely abdicated their role as bastions of free speech and robust debate.
In fact, a quarter of US college students say that it’s at least sometimes acceptable to shut down speech they don’t like with violence.
Americans are simply tired of spending thousands of dollars to send their teen to college, only to get a language police officer with a gender theory degree out the other end.
But a revolution is coming — and young people are at the helm.
Many Gen Zers, myself included, are waking up to the fact that colleges are simply not living up to their promises.
There are currently a million fewer students in college than there were before the pandemic. Meanwhile, trade schools and apprenticeship programs are flourishing.
In fact, four in 10 Zoomers don’t think college degrees are necessary.
Colleges are in for a huge market correction because they no longer hold a monopoly over young peoples’ perception of success.
Corporations like IBM, Tesla, and Google are eliminating degree requirements to attract enterprising young employees who paved their own path.
I’m glad to see the American public has woken up to the reality that higher education is not worthy of our trust — especially as a college dropout myself.
I left NYU with a 4.0 GPA after the school attempted to charge the full price tag for remote learning in the pandemic, and I’ve quickly learned that a fancy institution’s stamp of approval doesn’t determine my personal worth.
But I hope this crisis of faith helps colleges and universities rise to the occasion, not crumble.
Higher education has a crucial role in society — from producing scientific discoveries to facilitating robust debate to incubating the next generation of doctors, engineers and Supreme Court justices.
Campuses should be a place where bright minds mingle, not where language is policed. We need them as bastions of intellectual curiosity and free speech.
It’s time for institutions that got rich on federally backed loans and false promises to return to that core mission.
https://nypost.com/2023/07/13/faith-in-higher-education-hits-record-lows-and-rightfully-so/
***********************************************Newsom’s Plan to Fine School District $1.5 Million Over Blocked Textbook Lacks Legal Grounds
There are currently no legal grounds for California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s decision to fine a local school district $1.5 million for rejecting what the school board says is an “inappropriate” social studies textbook, the state’s top education official confirmed July 20.
The governor announced the fine in a July 19 statement, adding that the state is securing the textbook in question for all 1–5 grade students in the Temecula Valley Unified Valley School District.
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond said the anticipated passing of Assembly Bill 1078—a proposal that would prohibit local school boards from excluding books that contain LGBT and other minority groups—would allow the state to intervene in Temecula’s situation. The bill contains an urgency clause for it to take effect immediately should it pass the Legislature, Mr. Thurmond said.
“Assembly Bill 1078 would establish this process and that bill is being heard in the legislature and it does have an urgency clause, so we’re waiting to see what happens with that bill,” Mr. Thurmond told The Epoch Times at an unrelated press conference in Chino, California, July 20. “We’re currently investigating the Temecula Valley Unified School District based on complaints from students about … LGBTQ+ student needs.”
The bill will be heard in the state Senate Appropriations Committee after the lawmakers meet again in August after the summer recess.
Former state Sen. Melissa Melendez (R-Riverside) was among the first to question the legality of Mr. Newsom’s plan.
“It appears the governor is trying to create the authority to insert himself into [the district’s] business by leaning on the anticipated passing of [Assembly Bill 1078], which is still going through the legislative process,” Ms. Melendez told The Epoch Times before Mr. Thurmond’s response. “Aside from that, no one has explained who will determine compliance, and the governor’s office has yet to cite the legal authority that would give him justification to buy books a district doesn’t want, and then charge them for those books.”
Some also claim the governor lacks the authority to impose such consequences.
“The governor does not cite any legal authority for distributing the books to Temecula Valley … students or to allow the state to do so in place of the district,” said the California School Board Association in a statement posted on Twitter, adding that the current law requires the county superintendent to request the state provide textbooks if they are unable to provide such on their own.
In response to Mr. Newsom’s announcement, Temecula Unified board president Joseph Komrosky will call a special meeting for July 21 to consider other options for curriculums that meet state standards.
“Despite our continuing work and commitment to core values, Governor Newsom has taken unilateral action to intervene in the middle of our work without even contacting the school district first to understand what the school district may be further doing to meet all of the curriculum needs of our students,” Mr. Komrosky told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement. “What he calls inaction we see as responsible considerations for all of our community’s viewpoints as we come to a final decision and with time left to do so.”
The board president called Newsom’s announcement fiscally irresponsible.
“We do not appreciate Governor Newsom’s effort to usurp local control and all that will apparently result from these tactics is a waste of the taxpayers’ money,” he said. “We sincerely hope he has a 14-day return policy with the publisher of the books he just purchased.”
Mr. Newsom’s announcement comes one day after the school district doubled down on its rejection of a social studies curriculum that the board’s president deemed “inappropriate” due to its inclusion of an adult LGBT activist who reportedly had a sexual relationship with a minor.
The district has spent the year searching for an updated social studies curriculum as its current social studies curriculum, adopted in 2006, does not comply with updated state educational frameworks or California’s 2011 Fair Education Act, which requires schools to include historical LGBT and minority figures in social studies.
However, the board voted 3–2 to reject “Social Studies Alive,” a state-approved social studies curriculum for grades 1–5 that was piloted in the district’s classrooms last semester.
The decision reflects the board’s initial 3–2 vote in May to reject the curriculum, where Mr. Komrosky, the board president, expressed concerns over the curriculum’s inclusion of activist and politician Harvey Milk—whom Mr. Komrosky then called a “pedophile” based on reports Milk, then 33, had a sexual relationship with a 16-year-old male.
Mr. Komrosky has since clarified that his comment did not refer to Milk’s sexual orientation.
“My remarks about Mr. Milk are not based upon [his] being a homosexual but rather, based upon an adult having a sexual relationship with a minor. I would express the same sentiments [against] any adult being [featured] in K–5 textbooks,” he said in a June press conference.
However, Mr. Komrosky’s comment gained attention from Mr. Newsom, who threatened to send copies of “Social Studies Alive” to Temecula students and to enact legislation that would fine the district if the board doesn’t accept the textbook.
“We’re going to purchase the book for these students, the same one that hundreds of thousands of kids are already using. If these extremist school board members won’t do their job, we will, and fine them for their incompetence,” the governor said in a July 13 Twitter post.
Mr. Newsom also claimed, in the statement, that Temecula’s students would begin the school year on Aug. 14 without enough social studies textbooks for every student “because of the school board’s decision to reject a widely used social studies curriculum.”
The governor also said in the same statement he would partner with lawmakers to pass Assembly Bill 1078 to prohibit local school boards from excluding books that contain “diverse perspectives.”
In response, Mr. Komrosky said in a statement the same day that the board did not ban the textbook in question, but simply chose not to include it in the district’s social science-history curriculum.
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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