S/o public school forum thread

JoyInTheMorning

Thu, Aug 22 2019, 8:01 pm

amother [ Papaya ] wrote:

JoyInTheMorning- if you don't mind answering, was this a yeshiva or a day school? I'm sorry for all the parents who have to choose among options that are very not ideal.

How do you define yeshiva vs day school? I'm not sure that in my community there's a meaningful distinction.

JoyInTheMorning

Thu, Aug 22 2019, 8:03 pm

amother [ Firebrick ] wrote:

My relative went to PS for 6th, 7th and 8th grade.
Her parents hired a kodesh teacher but it wasn't enough to withstand the peer pressure of school and she stopped dressing tziusdik and her language got much worse.

They tried to put her back in a Jewish school for high school but the high schools wouldn't accept her and she had to go to a kiruv high school instead.

She came out of high school very left wing liberal and barely frum.

Barely frum is bad enough, but very left wing liberal! Now that's a tragedy!

#BestBubby

Thu, Aug 22 2019, 8:03 pm

I think there is an online chabbad school. Melamed is an online jewish school. inexpensive.

amother

Papaya

Thu, Aug 22 2019, 8:14 pm

JoyInTheMorning wrote:

How do you define yeshiva vs day school? I'm not sure that in my community there's a meaningful distinction.

Never mind, it's not that important. Again, it really stinks that those are the options in some communities.

PinkFridge

Thu, Aug 22 2019, 9:03 pm

Joy, I'm really sorry for your experiences and options. Ideally, formal school should be our partners in educating our children. You highlight that there are many reasons people are making reasoned decisions to send to ps, etc. If Yael is considering the request to have a forum, I'm sure this kind of post will be helpful in determining what the parameters and expectations would be.

JoyInTheMorning

Thu, Aug 22 2019, 9:26 pm

PinkFridge wrote:

PF, I often second-guess the decision to move us out of New York, where there are many more options, chinuch-wise. But there weren't many options for parnassah at the time, and the community we moved to seemed reasonable, even desirable in terms of Jewish education. You don't always know everything until you live in a place.

And as I often remind myself, it's not like New York is utopia. I speak to plenty of friends who aren't happy with the options that they have, even in New York. There seems to be a lot of toxicity in many schools, and the Jewish education isn't always so top notch either. Is it this generation? Is it just that we know and care about it now? Is it that in general fewer kids stay truly religious because in some way we are not inspiring them? Because in a time when it's so easy to learn about so much, it is harder to convince kids that our way is the right way? Because we put too much stress on them?

I think the issues of making sure -- well, making it as likely as possible -- that we give over Torah and values to the next generation are much deeper than any discussion about specifics of chinuch. The threads about getting into schools in Lakewood, about the financial pressures caused by tuition, about the balancing of lifestyle and tuition, about acceptance within communities, about the bizarre superficialities in the shidduch world -- they're just manifestations of a much bigger core problem that I haven't yet been able to articulate but which I know we have to figure out.

Despite the struggles that we've had, I know that my family is fortunate. But I also know that I have had to work through many of the issues that your OP raises, and I've had to take a broader, longer-term vision of the future. It's not necessarily a bad thing.

PinkFridge

Thu, Aug 22 2019, 10:12 pm

You know, I'm not sure if this is old-fashioned or reactionary. But wouldn't the world be a better place if we brought back chanoch l'naar al pi darko?

naturalmom5

Thu, Aug 22 2019, 11:15 pm

PinkFridge wrote:

You know, I'm not sure if this is old-fashioned or reactionary. But wouldn't the world be a better place if we brought back chanoch l'naar al pi darko?

Ya think

amother

Papaya

Thu, Aug 22 2019, 11:17 pm

PinkFridge wrote:

You know, I'm not sure if this is old-fashioned or reactionary. But wouldn't the world be a better place if we brought back chanoch l'naar al pi darko?

If we're being honest though, that's very challenging to do within budgetary constraints on an institutional level. Of course it's ideal, but how can it realistically be implemented without raising costs?

Frenchfry

Thu, Aug 22 2019, 11:17 pm

For those who put there kids in public school for the secular education:

If you are going to work so hard after school to supplement their Kodesh, why not do the reverse? My boys went to a regular cheder, and I took them out for secular studies and taught them at home. By the time they finished sixth grade, one was a year ahead of grade level and one was two years ahead. I got the full limudei Kodesh education and I was able to get a really high level secular education as well.

amother

Fuchsia

Thu, Aug 22 2019, 11:29 pm

Frenchfry wrote:

Because a cheder is not free, and secular education is.
You can only teach secular up to a certain point, high school chem, labs, physics at a high level, are not things you can easily teach unless you have a degree in that, while if you or your husband have enough yeshiva education, you can teach kodesh at home.

PinkFridge

Thu, Aug 22 2019, 11:35 pm

amother [ Papaya ] wrote:

The nature of the institution of school is such that some individuality will be sacrificed. Whether it's pure individuated instruction, adequate one on one time, whatever. But as parents, we need to know who our children are and help them develop into the best people they can be, given their kochos, and we should to find good schools to work with us. But there is so much we can be doing for our children that we don't. We do a lot TO our children, though, don't we....

JoyInTheMorning

Fri, Aug 23 2019, 4:37 am

mha3484 wrote:

My son is starting 3rd grade in an OOT Yeshivish school. I looked through the list of sefarim for all the grades and I will share it here if it helps anyone:

Pre1a is focused on Kriah. They build on davening. They also learned about yom tovim, hilchos shabbos and gedolim. The rebbe taught them each week about a different gadol which I LOVE. I really felt the key to this year was to instill a love of learning and pride to be a jewish boy.

1st grade they learned two parshios. Berashis and Noach. They also did a lot of work on Kesiva. Started to learn shemona esrei.

Second grade they learned Lech lecha through Vayetze. They started learning rashi in the spring time.

For third grade in addition to berashis that we have already I need to buy sefer shemos and mishnayos brachos.

Fourth grade is more chumash shemos, mishnyaos sukka, megillah and pesachim. dikduk and Navi. They learn sefer yehoshua.

Fifth grade they ask for a kitzur shulchan aruch and they start gemara. They finish sefer shemos and start bamidbar. They learn sefer shoftim.

Sixth Grade is Chumash Vaykira, Navi Shmuel Aleph, Gemara bava kama.

Seventh Grade is more Vaykira, Sefer Melachim, Bava metziya, mishnayos shabbos and they learn hilchos tefillin

8th grade is heavy on the gemara. The boys learn bava kama, sefer melachim.

This is just general because rebeim will talk about tefillah, yomtov, hashkfa based on the the themes of the year etc.

I don't mean to rain on your parade. But that kind of list is really meaningless. I've seen various teachers go through parts of the curriculum in such different ways. Learning Yehoshua can mean learning two perakim or learning most of the sefer. When a teacher goes through a parasha, he can skip parts or go through everything. The kids can really learn each pasuk carefully, and be encouraged to think of questions to ask (which is a preliminary exercise to understanding mefarshim), or the teacher can just read through pesukim without most of it entering the kids' heads.

I can for sure guarantee you that when they do Bava Kamma in sixth grade, they are at most learning a few daf. This is not a problem; there's no point racing through and not understanding. And with 118 daf, they could do it at the breakneck speed of Daf Yomi and just about finish it when the year is mostly over. It's good to focus on just a few daf.

But the thing is that Gemara is taught so poorly, in right wing and left wing schools alike. In sixth grade, what you want to do is to make sure the kids understand the various types of nezek (damage). It is important to do this outside of the Gemara, before they even start. (It would be good if they do the mishnayot in Bava Kamma first; but the curriculum of your child's school doesn't indicate that they do so.) Then, they should be learning about how Chazal connected the halachot to the pesukim in the Torah. But the kids aren't going to remember Mishpatim at that point; from what you've written, they've probably done Mishpatim in fourth grade, maybe even third. You'd really need to review Mishpatim, and have Mishpatim handy so the kids can understand the connections that are being made, and how each word in the Chumash is studied and explored and taken with utmost seriousness by Chazal.

Then you can get into the notion of argument (shakla v'tarya). You can introduce intra-generational and inter-generational discussion; local (apparent) contradictions and global (apparent) contradictions.. That's at the core of learning Gemara, but kids probably aren't ready for it in middle school. Yes, even we brilliant Jews aren't necessarily ready for this level of textual analysis when we're 11 or 12 years old. I fear that teaching too intensely too early can turn off many kids.

My point is that you can write down curricula, but it's a very tiny part of the picture. If parents -- both those who send their kids to Jewish schools, and those who send their kids to non-Jewish schools -- aren't themselves capable of teaching the material to a class, it's less likely that the kids will learn well. In the same way that basic literacy and numeracy of parents is a fairly good predictor of which kids will succeed in secular studies (especially in schools where teaching is not top-notch), basic literacy in Limudei Kodesh on the part of the parents is a fairly good predictor of which kids will succeed in those subjects.

This is why I, for one, am a great fan of any tool that kids or parents, whether FFB or BT, can use to improve their skills. Interlinear translations of the siddur, of Chumash, of Rashi are all great. The Schottenstein edition of the Talmud is fantastic. Use Sefaria.org as much as needed. Parents and kids should never be told that these resources are crutches and shouldn't be used. Better to walk with crutches than to sit in one place or have to be pushed in a wheelchair. (I apologize if stretching the analogy is offensive to anyone; I am trying to make a point that I think is crucial for educating our children.)

For any parent who is thinking of sending to a non-Jewish school or a Jewish school that isn't up to snuff in Limudei Kodesh, that's what I'd recommend. Become skilled so you can be the teacher. Make learning a central part of your daily life. Involve the whole family in it, not just once a week at the Shabbat table, but every day. You don't need to take out a sefer. You ought not be didactic; that will turn off most kids. Just bring up a topic from Torah and ask a question. It doesn't have to be from the week's parasha or Daf Yomi. Anything will do.

It has to be a part of our lives for it to be a part of our kids' lives.

I don't think, ultimately, that Jews left Orthodoxy in the first 2/3 of the 20th century because they went to public school. They left Orthodoxy because learning Torah wasn't a central part of their family life. You do not have to be in kollel to have Torah as a central part of your family life.

southernbubby

Fri, Aug 23 2019, 8:34 am

Many immigrants felt that they had no choice but to work on Shabbos so with no father at home, the kids were left to attend the Saturday matinee at the movies. There was also competition to see who could Americanize first.
There were few resources for teaching Judaism and much of what existed was unappealing and written by the Jewish Publication Society which was Conservative. Those few teachers for after school Hebrew lessons were extremely out of touch and were relics of the past who turned off the kids.
This doesn't mean that public school with after school Hebrew is preferable to a Jewish school today but in cases where it is the best or only choice, there are ways to keep the child connected.

amother

Firebrick

Fri, Aug 23 2019, 9:15 am

JoyInTheMorning wrote:

Barely frum is bad enough, but very left wing liberal! Now that's a tragedy!

Left wing liberal in a secular way. I don't mean LWMO. I mean championing for gay rights and other anti-torah views.

PinkFridge

Fri, Aug 23 2019, 9:37 am

JoyInTheMorning wrote:

For any parent who is thinking of sending to a non-Jewish school or a Jewish school that isn't up to snuff in Limudei Kodesh, that's what I'd recommend. Become skilled so you can be the teacher. Make learning a central part of your daily life. Involve the whole family in it, not just once a week at the Shabbat table, but every day. You don't need to take out a sefer. You ought not be didactic; that will turn off most kids. Just bring up a topic from Torah and ask a question. It doesn't have to be from the week's parasha or Daf Yomi. Anything will do.

It has to be a part of our lives for it to be a part of our kids' lives.

I don't think, ultimately, that Jews left Orthodoxy in the first 2/3 of the 20th century because they went to public school. They left Orthodoxy because learning Torah wasn't a central part of their family life. You do not have to be in kollel to have Torah as a central part of your family life.

This was a very thoughtful, informed post.
About why Jews left Orthodoxy. In the first part of the 20th century, when many people went to public school (and some dropped out of h.s. to support their families, I have such relatives) there were many factors to their leaving:
- pressure to keep Shabbos. People were struggling, incredibly.
- overall rifyon, weakness. You had parents who may not have been so well educated, who couldn't transmit what they didn't have. Or who may have worked on Shabbos, and even if they davened first, their kids picked up the messages. And were left to their own devices. In some areas there were missionaries who preyed on these kids.
- families being separated. There was a lot of resilience, and a lot of happy endings to families who were separated for years while their fathers were in the US working to bring them over. And some of them were then stuck in Europe due to WWI. But there was such a weakening of the family infrastructure due to the war, on both sides of the ocean, that led to attrition.

As for the second third, when Shabbos wasn't as great of a challenge (but it still was a challenge) you have that rifyon still in effect. Think of all the kids who go to college and dorms and who drop out of Yiddishkeit. Same type of thing happening then. You also had some dynamic mechanchim, and some much less than inspiring which led to disaffection.

ETA: Just read Southernbubby's post. Baruch shekivanti ;-D

Last edited by PinkFridge on Fri, Aug 23 2019, 9:38 am; edited 1 time in total

amother

Khaki

Fri, Aug 23 2019, 9:37 am

For those going to Public Schools, do you have an issue with mixed gender classrooms?
Science that is not in tune with Torah? S*x Education?

amother

Fuchsia

Fri, Aug 23 2019, 9:44 am

amother [ Khaki ] wrote:

For those going to Public Schools, do you have an issue with mixed gender classrooms?
Science that is not in tune with Torah? S*x Education?

I don't have an issue with mixed gender classrooms because the workplace or most future jobs are a mixed gender setting.
Science can always be put in tune with Torah , and s*x Ed is something that is taught when they are much older.

amother

Periwinkle

Fri, Aug 23 2019, 2:54 pm

We are MO so regardless, mine would be in a mixed class (for elementary school at least) and learn science.

We are not up to s*x ed yet. It is taught differently depending on place so I don't know precisely what they teach. I agree in principle with it being taught in a public school setting, so I will talk to my child about it when the time comes.

Frenchfry

Fri, Aug 23 2019, 4:53 pm

amother [ Fuchsia ] wrote:

I don't believe that any yeshiva education background means that you can keep a child up to par on a high school level. And you can't possibly put in the number of hours that a child is getting in a Jewish school. At least until high school, teaching secular studies to your own child does not require higher education. The availably of resources for limudei Chol is endless, while limudei Kodesh teaching resources are so limited. Besides, so many of the benefits of Jewish school education lie not in the material, but the atmosphere.