I recently listened to a shiur on Torahanytime by Rabbi Bentzion Shafier “Teaching Yirat Shamayim”. He says our Chinuch system is “building castles on sand”. We’re focusing on how to be frum to the letter (Halacha) and not why we have to be frum and what our goals in life should be, how it enriches our lives and the Gadlus of Hashem and belief in Hashem.
He says the typical good Yeshiva student when asked if they had a choice of being a Goy in public school, free to do as they please, or a Yid in the Yeshivah system, with many rules, hesitates, and worse, often answers honestly, the former. This is after many years of school.
We’re in denial about the true love of Yiddishkeit among our “good” youth. He says he gets asked regularly by “good” kids and “good” young adults (not with emotional problems or histories) “Do we really have to follow all the Mitzvos?” “How do we know?” “Why?” He feels these questions should have been answered early on in school and reviewed.
He says the basic questions that are answered which a Baal Teshuva hears in his first Kiruv class, arent touched on in twelve years of school. Then we wonder why are youth walks around clueless and aimless, and doing things by rote (I add, sometimes only publicly, unfortunately, as with the Orthoprax). Rabbi Rietti has spoken similarly, giving over necessary facts and figures that crystallize the validity of the Torah (a can of worms, an unwanted topic in many frum schools), that twelve years of school sadly never focused on.
We assume that our children understand the purpose of Jews, the validity of the Torah, and those in Chinuch gloss over it, and focus on the minutae of how to be frum and not the feelings behind it.