I did misunderstand your post and thought that you were saying that most of the top boys in serious yeshivos are from modern backgrounds. My mistake. However your contention that we see from the fact that there are any boys who are good at leaning that are the product of MO is untenable. Many, many rosh yeshivos went to public school, including rav avigdor miller, rav yitzchok sheiner, and rav nosson tzvi finkel. Does that mean that the product of pubic school is rosh yeshivos? No! You’re trying to prove the authenticity of a system based on a tiny minority of its products. They are not given tools to sit and learn. They are given guidance and discipline in secular studies and western thought. They are taught that just sitting and learning is backward. Have you ever seen what goes on in an MO school? Or are you making this assumption based solely on the fact that there are a handful of essentially baalei teshuva in regular schools?
According to you, the differences between an MO day school and a yeshivish school are mainly semantic, and superficial. Let’s chart out the differences:
Yeshivish school:
– Most of the day learning gemara from lively, motivated rebbeim who themselves learn torah the whole day.
– No involvement with secular culture, movies, music, television
– strict adherence to halacha, with repercussions for breaking thereof
– absolutely no intergender interaction
– expectation that one will remain learning seriously no matter what they do for a living
– guided path for the majority to continue full time learning
– college discouraged for the majority
– prudence and discouragement of pursuing worldly passions and interests
– mishmar
– Sunday is the same as any other day for learning
– discouraging or at least not acknowledging zionism
– mussar taught from seforim and a mesorah
Typical MO school:
– mussar based around social justice and prejudice, “anti racism”, with a sprinkling of teaching against lashon hora (regarding everyone, not just jews)
– assumption of or facilitated interaction with the opposite gender
– classes on and celebration of zionism and its secular, murderous founders
– tolerance of all matter of deviancy (except yeshivishe people or the dreaded “satmar”)
– celebration of and encouragement to pursue higher education for its own sake
– roughly half of the time spent learning torah as compared to yeshivishe schools
– Sunday is a day of abandon without any learning
– paltry amount of gemara skills learned, many children have no idea which mesechta they are learning or even what “mesechta” means. Most do not learn tosfos until mid high school, if at all
– integration of secular culture as a given part of jewish life, including consumption of music, movies, television, with a quiet suggestion that one follow the non Jewish rating system and avoid R rated content
Where exactly are the parallels?