We found particularly ironic last week’s news reports that the New York City Department of Education will be investigating whether students in 39 “ultra-Orthodox” (i.e., chassidic) yeshivas are receiving adequate instruction in secular subjects like English, math, and science.
The impending probe follows a complaint filed by a group called Young Advocates for Fair Education represented by attorney Norman Siegel, a former director of the New York Civil Liberties Union.
During his tenure as head of the NYCLU, Mr. Siegel led its opposition to public funding for religious schools – even for the secular portion of their instructional programs. Yet here is Mr. Siegel complaining that the very curriculum for which he fought to deny funding to yeshivas is not being provided to yeshiva students.
Similarly, Young Advocates for Fair Education was founded by one Naftuli Moster, who reportedly grew up in Boro Park as one of 17 children in a chassidic family. He says the yeshiva he attended offered limited secular instruction and he formed the organization as the result of the challenges he faced in pursuing post-secondary studies. He attended Touro College and City University of New York’s College of Staten Island and is working on a Masters in social work. So it appears his early “deprived” education wasn’t that much of an impediment after all.
We daresay there are many stories of successful business ventures among chassidim. In that regard, at least, the extent to which certain courses of instruction are limited doesn’t necessarily hamper people with drive and ambition. And never underestimate the intellectual rigor required for mastery of Talmud.
Back in 1972, the United States Supreme Court exempted Amish parents from parts of Wisconsin’s compulsory education laws, declaring that the parents had a fundamental right to educate their children in accordance with their religious tenets and that this right outweighed the state’s interest in educating those children.
We must be careful not to allow a purportedly benign inquiry into the adequacy of educational instruction to morph into an assault on a time-tested and distinctive way of life.