BS”D
Mybat, knowing who Jackie Robinson or Rosa Parks is makes sense only when you’ve learned gantz Shas with meforshim ten times over. In the real scheme of things, they are specks of dust, symbols more than anything else. Besides, they as unconnected to us as lehavdil Sarah Schenirer or R’ Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz would be to a black person. Can I expect a US public school to teach about Sarah Schenirer as an example of women in education? Nope. We are supposed to be different and apart and so are our heroes.
I would not even expect a public school Holocaust class to mention Reb Elimelech Tress ZTL.
I’m very proud that I used to think Placido Domingo was the name of a Latin American guerilla leader, and cared little when someone set me straight.
That is because I don’t enjoy opera or think it is anything but bitul zman, and I don’t do business in Latin America either so when I read the online papers I gloss over the articles about anyone with a Spanish name who isn’t directly threatening Yidden (like Chavez YMS).
On the other hand I’m not proud of the four years I wasted in an Ivy League university learning kefira and useless material that I never used in my career, though I had little choice in the matter because of the way I was raised. I do not care that I know who Voltaire or Rousseau or Plato were and what they wrote or that I know who the Jacobins were and who Jinnah was. I’d only find value in reading the philosophers again if I found myself doing kiruv work with those who were taught that it supplanted than Torah chas vesholom, which pretty much was what we were taught.
I will not raise future generations in the same way, and I’d be as proud of a child of mine graduating from where I did (undergraduate, not professional which is another matter indeed) as I would be if I had offspring in Federal Koilel.