They say that they are concerned about our children. They say
that our children spend their time studying ancient texts,
full of material that is not "relevant" to modern life.
Chareidi children probably do not know when the French
Revolution took place, and never learned trigonometry. (We
should stress that this only applies to the boys since the
standard Beis Yaakov education in Israel includes a broad
range of secular subjects and is comparable to the general
education of Jewish girls throughout the world.)
These are some of the voices heard from the Israeli Left in
recent weeks. They say that they want to help us, but we know
that it is only the same old cultural war "in sheep's
clothing."
Our educators stand at the tip of a three thousand year
heritage of experience, in many different environments. The
principles that they apply have stood the test of time. Why
should anyone expect that the experts of the Western
educational system, which is no more than about 150 years
old, can help us out?
By the measures that count, our education is very successful.
This does not mean that there is no room for improvement --
there are many things that can and should be improved.
However on the whole, chareidi education has certainly
achieved marked success, especially in contrast with Western
education.
By our standards -- and we believe by the standards of most
civilized people -- the goals of education are for children
to grow up to be morally developed, intellectually mature and
able to function in society as adults.
Western schools are rife with violence and drugs. Educational
authorities are considering requiring the students to undergo
a body search for weapons upon entering the schools each day.
Israeli secular schools are among the most violent in the
world. Our schools are also old fashioned in this area: there
is no violence in them. This does not mean that they cannot
be improved in areas of middos and derech
eretz, but only that it is ridiculous to look to Western
education to better our system in its level of moral
achievement.
In raw intellectual development, those trained in Talmud are
second to none. They are trained and experienced in many
types of analysis, and are in general able to deal with any
intellectual challenge that they are faced with. The
intellectual abilities of the products of the cheder
system are generally very well developed. A study published
in the Israeli educational journal Megamot found that
yeshiva students did as well as or better than their secular
counterparts in questions that did not require previous
knowledge but just problem-solving ability. Anecdotally, the
relative ease that yeshiva-educated young men have in
learning a trade such as computer programming shows that
their education was not lacking -- except perhaps in some
bits of knowledge or minor skills that are easily made up in
a month or two.
Possibly most important of all, our children grow up happy
and eager to take their place in our society. They do not
yearn to travel the world to find themselves; they know who
they are and what they want to be. They want to build a
classic Jewish home, to establish and expand the boundaries
of kedusha in the most basic way possible.
These are the measures that count. While we can always move
higher -- and we should strive to do so -- unfortunately we
have no competition at the moment.
