Homeschooling: An Authentic Torah Approach,Brenda Goldstein

Why should Jewish parents homeschool their children?

King Solomon said we must "train a youth according to his way." In other words, we must teach a child according to how he or she learns best. Thus, the Torah's basis for homeschooling.

Why is homeschooling better suited to achieving this educational goal than an academic institution? Because it is the parents who teach their child or children, making for a low teacher-to-student ratio. Plus, parents naturally have a greater interest and investment in their children's progress, both emotionally and academically, than would a schoolteacher of several students.

A good argument for homeschooling lies in the story of Jacob and Esau. Isaac and Rebecca put both twins on the "yeshiva track," though only Jacob took to it. Rather than learning and growing from Torah, Esau rebelled against it, and became a symbol of Jewish oppression.

The personal reasons for choosing homeschooling over academic institutions vary. They include the desire to instill in one's children better values than those often found in the public, and sometimes private, schools; the overwhelming cost of tuition for private school; the many hours Observant children spend in day school, away from their parents; the need for more recreation time; and, most important, the ability to tailor a child's education to his or her needs.

Larry Beck, a Southern California native who started homeschooling his sons when he and his family moved to Atlanta more than ten years ago, talked to a prominent rabbi about his desire to homeschool.

"The answer I got basically told me that I could homeschool," says Beck. "What he told me was, the Torah puts the chiuv [obligation] on you to educate your children. Therefore, if you can do as good a job as the schools, then you do the schooling. The only time you should put them in a school is if the school can do a better job. Now, his opinion and many other people's opinion is that the schools are always going to do a better job. But I don't see it that way."

Harry and Mariela Broome, of North Hollywood, California, homeschool their four children. "Our decision to homeschool was made only after a great deal of information-gathering and much thought," says Harry. "It wasn't really anything negative about the schools that prompted us to do this . But we homeschool because we feel that, for our family, right now it gives us the best opportunity to tailor our children's education to their own needs, abilities and learning styles."

"One of the things homeschooling does is give you the opportunity to really teach your kids your values," says Sara Morrow, also of North Hollywood. Sara and her husband, Reuben, pulled their three children out of day school and started homeschooling because they suspected that they could impart Torah values more effectively than an institution.

"We're not even fans of the word 'homeschooling,'" says Broome, "because it implies trying to duplicate school at home. That's not at all what it's about - we just think of it as a personalized education."

Many people ask homeschoolers, "How do you socialize your children?" Mariela Broome regularly gets her children together with other Jewish parents and children who homeschool. This small homeschooling group makes regular field trips during the year to places such as the Huntington Library, the Getty Center, the Hollywood Bowl, Kid Concepts, the Zimmer Museum, the park and the beach. Sara Morrow has involved her sons in a Jewish boy scouts troupe for years. In addition, homeschooled children often take classes outside the home, with other children (such as music, science, sports or dance).

"Socialization is no problem at all," says Broome. "The truth is that most homeschooled kids spend much more time out and about than schooled kids and probably have more day-to-day interaction with people of different ages than school children do. Homeschooled children also have play dates with friends, outings with other homeschooled children, Shabbos dates with friends, and lots of time with their siblings and parents."

This issue of socialization presents itself in a more complicated way in the Torah world. Observant children will eventually meet a marriage partner based on their social connections in the community, as well as the day school/high school/yeshiva/seminary they attended. Though many homeschooled kids eventually go on to yeshiva and seminary, these guidelines on how to make a "good match" have to become more flexible in order to accommodate the growing number of homeschoolers in the various Orthodox communities.

Susan Lapin, whose husband founded and served as rabbi of the Pacific Jewish Center in Venice, California, homeschooled her children in Los Angeles before "I had ever even heard the word." To her knowledge, she was the first Orthodox homeschooler in the area. Mrs. Lapin now lives in Seattle and has two married daughters, both homeschooled.

"I didn't see them having any more problems than any of their friends," says Mrs. Lapin. "And I think that the bottom-line fact is that there is a big strata going on in the 'shidduch parsha' [area of matchmaking], and ranging from people who really and truly want to know, 'What camp did the mother go to when she was seven years old?'

"A family like that is never going to look at our family, but we wouldn't take a look at them, either. If anything, it [homeschooling] became an object of interest; it made my girls stand out in the crowd."

Mrs. Lapin continues: "You have to at some point connect to the community. It would be certainly hard to live out somewhere unknown and have your kids never go to school, camp, seminary or yeshiva and, all of a sudden, show up. Most families I know who homeschool have connections. And once you have those connections, that's where [an eventual match comes from]. Except for a small minority who don't really care where you went for fifth grade."

Despite King Solomon's famous Torah quote, sending our children to school has become the norm, where homeschooling is considered strange by the majority. Homeschoolers are concerned that their communities will increasingly look at them as outsiders, and that it will become more difficult for their kids to stay in the social loop as their peers spend year after year together in the classroom.

It used to be the case, however, that nearly everyone homeschooled. It was only since the Second Temple period that every town had a Torah-learning facility. Rabbi Yehoshua ben Gamla, a kohen gadol (high priest) wanted to provide Torah education to the many orphans who had no parent to teach them. Eventually, even those with parents attended these facilities of Torah learning, and it has become the norm to attend a formal educational institution.

"People talk to you like they think you're crazy for the first half of the conversation when they find out you're homeschooling," says Sara Morrow. "I had one friend here who was appalled when she heard I was going to do this. She called me and said, 'Are you out of your mind? How could you possibly think you can replicate what school does? Socially, they're going to be inept!' She has since come back and said to me, 'You have the nicest kids in the neighborhood. I was wrong.'"

Why is the Orthodox community so averse to homeschooling? Larry Beck feels it has a lot to do with the fact that the Jewish community invests a lot of time, money and effort into training people to become Jewish educators. Homeschoolers pose a threat to their livelihood. "The [educational] system puts a very big emphasis on raising and training [educators]. So, it has a very vested interest in not allowing [deviation from the yeshiva-day school model]."

Susan Lapin adds, "I think we've built up very expensive institutions and we're very proud and very grateful that there is a place we can send our kids . I know people do have trouble sometimes when they move into a community, and if you're not sending your children to the school, there's an attitude, 'Well, you must be undermining it,' instead of making a decision of what you think is best for your child. There's a fear in the Jewish community, and it's growing in the Orthodox community, of anyone stepping outside the bounds."

So, how can homeschooling become more of a viable alternative in Torah education? First of all, more Torah-observant Jews have to homeschool. As the number of homeschoolers within observant communities has grown, more home-based educational resources have developed. Online, one can find listservs such as Torch-D on Shamash.org, which serves as a support system for Torah-centered homeschoolers worldwide. Sites such as www.e-chinuch.org provide numerous lesson ideas and worksheets for both institutional and home-based educators. One can even take a Torah-based class over the Internet, given by a rabbi.

Even parents who did not, themselves, receive a Torah education growing up can provide a Torah education for their children. Suggested religious-studies curricula can be found through Torah Umesorah and Chabad. One can purchase textbooks and workbooks through such resources as Torah Umesorah publishing, bookstores, and other sources that can be found online. Some families hire tutor-rebbes (rabbi-teachers), others send their children to school for religious studies only.

If we educate our children according to their individual ways, as King Solomon admonishes us, we will help to nurture and strengthen their inner flames. Only then can we ensure the continuation of the Jewish people as a light unto the nations.

Brenda Goldstein, an occasional contributor to The Jewish Press, lives in Los Angeles with her husband, son, and two cats.

Read Comments (2)

Homeschooling: An Authentic Torah Approach , Brenda Goldstein

Great article, homeschooling is viable option to American Jewish parents
Date 07:10, 10-25, 08

Great article and long overdue topic although I think the high cost of Jewish day schools is a motivation for homeschooling.
We are a religious-zionist family from the US that homeschooled our young children because of the prohibitive cost of our local day school. As the children became older we realized we didn't have the Torah background to continue as teachers - so we had an additonal motivation for aliyah, which we did B'H. As the govt. of Israel and semi govt. organizations (aliyat hanoar, kidum hahinuch) support religious education through yeshiva HS, we had no problem Jewishly educating our 7 children here in Israel.
I would recommend observant homeschoolers in the US to organize by cities and have different parents provide shiurim in their area of expertise: Talmud, Tanach, math, Hebrew, English etc. If such organizing pressures day schools to lower their outrageous tuition costs then that's an added benefit. A better solution to Jewish education is aliyah. B'haztlacha!
(As an aside: the article mentions that the Jewish community is against homeschooling because of great sums of money invested in "Jewish educators" As a former teacher in both Jewish day school and public school I can tell you that the money invested in American Jewish education is NOT going to teacher salaries. In the city where I taught, the day school salary was some 30% lower than what I received from the public school and provided no benefits (health insurance, life insurance, pension.)

omission of name to above comment on homeschooling op-ed
Date 09:10, 10-26, 08

I forgot to add my name and address to the above comment:
Yossi Shomron
Nitzan, Israel