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| Chasidic Yeshiva students in Williamsburg (JTA) |
The arguments are well known by anyone following this important story. Accusations are flying by each side against the other as having nefarious motives.
Rabbi Yaacov Sebbag who is the principal of the United Lubavitcher Yeshiva Ocean Parkway makes the argument that implementing those guidelines would severely undermine his ability to serve his students. He is joined in that argument by The Council for American Private Education. It is a legitimate argument because as he notes the new guidelines require all private and parochial schools to to not only provide a curriculum of substantial equivalency with that of public school - it would require them to allocate the same amount of time per required subject as public schools. That would leave virtually no time for religious studies. To put it the way Rabbi Sebbag did:
The regulations would require our schools to limit the instruction we offer in Jewish studies and require us to replace them with classes in theater, arts, dance, consumer and family science, and other subjects that our parents and our school leaders do not want.
To his credit, Rabbi Sebbag realizes that the focus should be on the few schools that do not have a secular studies curriculum. Not on his and other schools like his that have a dual religious/secular studies curriculum.
(I wonder whether as a Chabad Chasid he would include focusing on those schools in Chabad that unlike his – do not have any secular studies curriculum. Or how he feels about the late Lubavicther Rebbe directive to not have a secular studies curriculum in a Chabad school if would be viable without one. As is the case in Crown Heights, the location of Chabad headquarters. But I digress.)
His primary point is one that I often make. Which is that until NYSED’s recent attempt to change its requirements into something untenable, most Yeshivos and day schools (i.e those that have a dual curriculum) have done pretty well in providing a substantially equivalent secular studies curriculum without undermining their religious studies curriculum. Graduates from schools like that have enabled them to attend a variety of colleges and universities including some of the top schools in the country. That should have been NYSED’s focus instead of upending what has worked overall until now.
This brings me to Miriam Moster. She is the wife of Naftuli Moster whose organization YAFFED (Young Advocates for Fair Education) is responsible for this turn of events. She makes the argument that if not for NYSED the schools that offer no secular studies would continue along those lines with impunity. Thus harming their students by continuing to deny them the education or educational tools they need to go any further in their educational lives. She said that she has been fighting for ultra-Orthodox students for nearly a decade. She insists that NYSED’s requirements should be supported. And described why she feels that way by describing what that kind of education did to her husband:
He had grown up in the Belz Hasidic community in Brooklyn, attending Belz schools from nursery through post-high school. But in all those years, he never learned science, geography, history, how to write an essay or how to calculate a tip. Instead, he and his peers devoted as many as 14 hours a day to the study of ancient Hebrew and Aramaic religious texts.
She explains that NYSED’s guidleines will assure that schools like the one her husband attended will comply with their new requirements. And then blames 2 religious organizations (Agudah and PEARLS) for trying to undermine that goal by insisting that there ought to be no regulation at all and that NYSED should return to the status quo ante whereby they left religious schools alone.
In my view she has a valid point in expressing that fear. By returning to the status quo ante where schools like the one her husband attended were ignored – students that attend them will continue to be denied the education they deserve.
If one examines the two opposing positions carefully one will find that their goals are not really that far apart. Unfortunately that does not stop each side form accusing the other of nefarious motives.
The goal should be improving the education of those schools that defied NYSED’s original requirements of a substantially equivalent secular studies curriculum. And insist that they comply in the same manner that most Yeshivos do. The new guidelines go well beyond that and ought to be opposed. But the idea of going back to the past where Yeshivos were ignored and left to their own devices is not a solution either.
In my view the two opposing side would do well to coordinate with each other since they both more or less agree on the goal. Which is to leave most Yeshivos alone and focus instead on those that have little to no secular studies curriculum.
Unfortunately the animus on both sides will make that as likely as my becoming a dotcom billionaire! Can anyone imagine what could be accomplished if they did, though?