truthsharer:
“Have you ever discussed this with a therapist? A 13 year old davening a 1 hour shemona esrei is most likely some OCD issue.”
That’s jumping to conclusions rather fast… there are many far more positive (and likely) reasons for somebody davening a long SE.
Wolf:
“it must be acknowledged that it *is* unusual to take an hour to daven Shmoneh Esrei”
Agreed.
“and, like anything else that is unusual, if it intereferes with normal routine activities (such as going to school), then it *does* become a problem.”
Disagree.
“A school has a program and a cirriculum. A school cannot make customized schedules for every girl based on their own peculiarities. They have to schedule classes at a time that’s convenient for them and they have to have all the girls conform to that schedule. You cannot run a school if one girl feels that her davening will allow her to skip the first period or two and another girl feels that her chesed mission is more important than class and a third girl feels that she’d be more spiritually accomplished by learning sefer X when the class is learning sefer Y. That’s not a school — that’s anarchy.”
Obviously there must be some semblance of order in a school, but a school should still allow its students to follow their own individual spiritual paths and not smother them with rules, regulations, and conformity. A little bit of flexibility does not automatically create anarchy.