GAW: There are probably more Yiddish girls/women than men in the special Ed field. Not all are Chasidish but many are. The average Boro Park girl speaks at least some Yiddish even if she’s not davka Chasidish and can brush up on her skills to teach special needs kids. We are not talking about teaching a college course in Yiddish but are discussing low functioning kids with limited vocabularies.
I think there are even distance learning programs towards a BA, maybe even for special Ed based out of Brooklyn. And of course most of these Yiddish speakers don’t currently work in public schools, but if a public school is looking to fill such a position there are many able and willing candidates.
The argument has evolved from what’s required by the County/city and I think even they’d agree that whatever’s in the best interest of the child needs to be done. Now if someone speaks Aramaic they won’t even consider asking for teachers in their language as they are well aware that the government can’t accommodate them even if they so desire. This is not the case with Yiddish in NYC nowadays.
This is not the case in Monsey either and I can’t understand how anybody can be so harsh and say these kids should “go fly a kite” because of a misguided liberal notion of government equal benefits for all or no one, coupled with an inferior shtetl mentality.
And again, despite some off-color language I still recommend the Tablet article I mentioned. Maybe someone can paste it with a little censuring? Is that allowed?