Loyal Jew: Indeed, according to R. Samson Rapahel Hirsch’s TIDE, the workplace (and the street, the grocery store, the art meuseam, the cruise vacation, the college, and anywhere else you find your self) is an “applied yeshiva.” You learn in order to know how to act properly in the world – how to participate fully in the best of human civilization within the parameters of halacha. According to R. Hirsch, our GOAL is to apply halacha in our lives in thw world – using halacha to decide what to eat, how to work, how to speak to our co-workers and clients, what are to look at and what not to look at, and how to judge the validity of the art’s message, what classes to take/not take in college, and judge the legitimacy of their messages, ect, ect, ect. Learning is a means to this end; lilmod k’dei laasos. And by living Torah, by making Torah-regulated life a reality, we show the rest of the world by our example how to live full, Godly lives. We cannot do this in the closed-off walls of the beis medrash; we can only do this by following halacha while we fully participate in and embrace all that is good and worthwhile in the world. We need the beis midrash to know how to act outside, but if we never make it outside then we are learning for our own self-indulgence, not lishmah – for the Torah’s sake.
You may not like this outlook, and that is your privilege. But please don’t denigrate a major stream of thought about what it means to be a Jew by perverting R’ Hirsch’s thought and calling it his own.