Reply To: Can we have an adult conversation about education?

I think there are good arguments to be made in favor of educating our youth.

For one, it seems to me that absurd ideas generally find root in woefully uneducated societies. I think there is a pretty straight line from being severely educationally-disabled to refusing to vaccinate your children against polio, for example.

But an ignorant society also can be easily manipulated. There is a reason slaves were not permitted an education. Consider this North Carolina law from the days of slavery:

“AN ACT TO PREVENT ALL PERSONS FROM TEACHING SLAVES TO READ OR WRITE, THE USE OF FIGURES EXCEPTED
Whereas the teaching of slaves to read and write, has a tendency to excite dis-satisfaction in their minds, and to produce insurrection and rebellion, to the manifest injury of the citizens of this State:
Therefore, Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of North Carolina, and it is hereby enacted by the authority of the same, That any free person, who shall hereafter teach, or attempt to teach, any slave within the State to read or write, the use of figures excepted … upon conviction, shall, at the discretion of the court, if a white man or woman, be fined not less than one hundred dollars, nor more than two hundred dollars, or imprisoned; and if a free person of color, shall be fined, imprisoned, or whipped, at the discretion of the court, not exceeding thirty nine lashes, nor less than twenty lashes …”

Thomas Jefferson is credited with saying: “An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people.”

The success of the Satmar business expo can be deceiving, in my opinion. According to the NYT article, there are 200,000 chasidim in NY and we know the starting point for that was the Holocaust (meaning, a very small community). Like a giant bucket of water that keeps doubling in volume every year, it takes a long time to get from the very first drop in the bucket to a quarter of the bucket being full – but it takes only two more years to go from being a quarter full to becoming completely full.

I cannot ignore the fear that we are standing today, economically, at the bucket being a quarter full and for now, there are enough jobs in our own community to employ everyone who wants to be employed. But without an education system in place, I fear that we stand at the precipice of an economic meltdown. We risk suffering a Detroit-like meltdown within the prosperity that surrounds us.

I see the chassidishe community as an upside-down pyramid with fewer money makers at the bottom point of the pyramid and a crushing weight readying itself to pile on to the top. Sticking to the Detroit analogy, one day the manufacturing plants will close and the entire city will falter.

To make matters worse, many (but concededly not most) of the money makers at the bottom point of the pyramid did get an education before it became passe.

We cannot continue this way.

Why make it near impossible for a chassidishe boy to become a CPA? Why can’t we have more chassidishe men and women (who do not leave the community) become doctors? Why can’t a bochur with a great mind find a comfortable living in the legal profession instead of stocking shelves at the minimum livable wage?

Defenders point to Europe and say “hey it worked for us there” (as if hashem allowed that story to end well for us) but the world was a far different place then and having an education was far less common among the greater society. Today, an overwhelming majority of decent jobs require (for better or for worse) and degree and/or a basic education (and they are not the same thing). This is especially true in the Northeast US.

And I have a sneaky feeling that if given a choice between two schools identical in social acceptance, hashkufa and Torah, one with a secular education option and one without, there would be droves of parents (and eventually most) that would choose to educate their children. But today, parents have to sacrifice either Torah, hashkufa or social standing in order to educate their children. It is a real shame and I pray that Hashem helps us as a society see the nolad before it comes crashing down on our heads.