GH:
Correct. A school should not be a gemach. Ideally, other organizations should serve the role of assisting parents with tuition costs. Trouble is, that is a fantasy. There are no such organizations. So it won’t happen. If these hundreds or even thousands of kids end up in the street, a generation is lost, and the community would need to tackle a huge crisis. So that’s not the answer either.
These same yeshivos conduct countless fund raising campaigns. They train the students to collect tzedokoh at various times of the year (debatable whether this is good or bad chinuch), and they have various events including dinners, chinese auctions, mailings, and other events. This should spread the financial burden away from tuition. But sadly, this does not happen.
TM:
You have a valid point. The clocked hours often do not reflect the amount of time invested in the job. Yeshivos know that,, and compensation is calculated that way (though it is still usually way too low). But there is a painful reality. There is a huge (though shrinking) percentage of melamdim, rebbes, teachers, etc. who lack training, and are utter failures at doing the job well. They may have a greater knowledge fund than their students, but that is nowhere close to the top of the list of qualities and skills needed to teach a class. We have large classes, and classroom management is a mammoth task. The time that gets invested in discipline, enforcing rules, etc., is destroying education time. Truly trained faculty make lesson plans that captivate the students who want to attend, participate, and absorb the material. Kids are not so “bad behaved”. Teachers are just unable to manage them because they don’t know how. Kollel for a decade has never prepared anyone for a classroom, though it may have enhanced one’s Torah knowledge.
Being a rebbe requires individual attention to every single talmid, including connecting with the parents. Nachas calls are not a staple, though discipline calls are frequent. Watch what happens when a kid discovers the rebbe extending a caring hand. Presto, the “bad behavior” vanishes. I’m not preaching here. I just would like to see our mechanchim and parents more aware of what chinuch is. I promise you one thing. It is not synonymous with discipline.