Can you guess why this school only allowed 5% to take SATs?

PinkFridge

Mon, Feb 11 2019, 11:06 am

amother wrote:

So they must work in a lower tier job and support the husband. Can't you see how stressful that could be?

I have a friend who is a frum female surgeon. She practices and raises her own kids. She is off Wednesdays and leaves early friday. It is doable.

And put her life on hold while in medical school and building up a career. Unless her family was available to pick up the pieces while she had children, etc.

amother

Green

Mon, Feb 11 2019, 11:12 am

nchr wrote:

I think another short coming about the frum school system is how it limits a child's knowledge of what s/he can study. Everyone knows about the standards jobs and majors, but there is a whole wide academic world out there that many frum students do not even know exist. I remember having a discussion with someone who was trying to attend college in her mid twenties and she said that she had no idea there were 100s of fields of study and really always thought majors were limited to about 20-30 different topics.

The frum versions of college and grad school are limiting. I had 2 former HS girls who got their undergraduate and masters in a year and a half. They also were working.

amother

Green

Mon, Feb 11 2019, 11:16 am

PinkFridge wrote:

And put her life on hold while in medical school and building up a career. Unless her family was available to pick up the pieces while she had children, etc.

She had her first 2 kids as a resident and scored the top grade in the country on a certain exam. Her husband is also a physician. He was in emergency medicine. It worked as they alternated shifts. Plus they could afford a nanny. They always tried to have one parent home.

nchr

Mon, Feb 11 2019, 11:17 am

amother wrote:

The frum versions of college and grad school are limiting. I had 2 former HS girls who got their undergraduate and masters in a year and a half. They also were working.

I'm aware of that; however, I was pointing out that even if they would consider a regular college, knowledge of the vast variety of majors is lacking. There are probably people who find teaching, accounting, medicine, pt/ot, therapy/social work and law uninteresting; however, they may have desired to further their education if they had known they could have been an anthropologist, ecologist, vaccine developer, civil planner, aerospace engineer, etc. I'd be curious to poll BY high school girls and see how many of them know who can major in anthropology and then poll those who do to see if they know about all of the subsets in that particular field (linguistic anthropology, biological, cultural, etc.) as well as the types of careers you can have with them.

amother

Green

Mon, Feb 11 2019, 11:24 am

nchr wrote:

I totally agree with you. There is a lack of choice.

I did a project with my college class on finance. They had to choose a career. It was remarkable how un-diverse the fields were. They were all mom careers like teacher or therapist.

Why not an engineer or an architect or whatever?

tigerwife

Mon, Feb 11 2019, 11:31 am

amother wrote:

Who says they must? Many of my friends who wanted to support a kollel husband went for advanced degrees so that they could afford to support their family. I’m not sure why many people here are looking down on nurses or OTs but these are respectable jobs with a decent pay that can support a small family. Not everyone can be a doctor, and not everyone is even interested in working in the medical field at all.

Many of these kollel men end up going to work after 5 years or so when one income is no longer enough; some go to school as well and go on to become professionals. Kollel is not equal to lower tier jobs.

I also see here that some people think women are enslaved to do everything for their kollel husband. Actually, it’s empowering for some women to be the breadwinner. The problem actually goes the other way, when women think they are superhuman and can do it all while in reality they need to be convinced to let things go and allow their husbands to help out financially or in the household.

amother

Jetblack

Mon, Feb 11 2019, 11:59 am

I went to Machon high school in Brooklyn about 17 years ago. Many if not most of us took the SATs. When I scored highly, the principal encouraged me to apply for a national scholarship. When I won it, he announced it to all the 12th grade classes.
I'm sure I could have become a doctor or lawyer, but I actually WANTED to have a husband who would sit and learn Torah for many years, and I wanted to have a career that would enable me to support my family while also still having time to spend with my children. The female surgeon mentioned above sounds like an absolutely brilliant person who made it all work, but most people find med school difficult to juggle with a family. I chose to become a speech therapist (yes, cliche) because it aligned with my greater life goals. Today I'm a director of therapy, I'm able to juggle a decent paying job with spending time with my family, and my husband was able to learn full time for almost 15 years. I wish he could still be doing that today! Go ahead and feel bad for me, but I have nothing but gratitude to Hashem for all this.

amother

Green

Mon, Feb 11 2019, 12:08 pm

tigerwife wrote:

I am not looking down on those jobs. They are a great job for some. I am sad about the lack of choices.

My two friends wish they had the option to be nurses. Nursing is discouraged in their community.

nchr

Mon, Feb 11 2019, 12:08 pm

amother wrote:

Your career goal was to be a wife and mother in that lifestyle and therapy was only a necessary side goal that would help you achieve that goal. However, other's have different goals. There needs to be more exposure so children can make the choice about what they want to do for their entire lives because, believe me, if I was in one of the typical frum careers, I would dread going to work every day. BH I found a career I am passionate about, but it is way off the beaten path.

amother

Green

Mon, Feb 11 2019, 12:14 pm

amother wrote:

It is all about choices and having the proper educational foundation. If those doors were open to you, and you choose to close them rather than having them closed to you, then that's the way it should be.

I can't tell you the number of people who have told me they could have been an attorney or a doctor. It's a lot more than just having the smarts.

amother

Jetblack

Mon, Feb 11 2019, 12:16 pm

nchr wrote:

Absolutely. I just resent the implication expressed by many above that I was limited by my school or my community.

amother

Navy

Mon, Feb 11 2019, 12:53 pm

It sounds as if Frum girls/women are in the same position in terms of their educational and career opportunities that secular women were in before the 1970's.

Back then the smartest women were relegated to being nurses and elementary school teachers - and that's the ones who were allowed to actually get a degree.

I know a lot of mothers and grandmothers who were relegated to those less prestigious, less lucrative fields back then who could have been brilliant doctors, lawyers, architects, professors - whatever would most have satisfied them and taken full advantage of their talents. These women were not particularly happy about being a teacher rather than a lawyer and many of them encouraged their daughters to reach for more fulfilling career choices.

The reality is that most women will wind up working - because two incomes are necessary to support most families in today's economy; because they might wind up supporting themselves and their families through bad luck or because it is their choice to have a fulfilling career.

The issue raised in the original article is that the school actually stifled their students in terms of fulfilling their potential - for whatever reason.

While it might be worse for boys than girls and some schools don't engage in this, I suspect from numerous threads on this forum that most girls are funneled into traditional "woman's" fields.

It's also disingenuous to write that doctors, lawyers or other higher paying prestigious jobs preclude being a wife and mother. In many ways, once a woman gets through the initial grind, it is actually easier to make the different parts of one's life fit together. One gets more money per hour - can afford help and often can find positions that enable one to determine hours one wants to work. Not all prestigious jobs require that one work 24/7 especially if one is not concerned with being the head of the company.

naturalmom5

Mon, Feb 11 2019, 12:55 pm

nchr wrote:

Are you aware that to be an anthropologist , you are often required to live in very remote parts of the world and eat what the natives eat (which usually isn't kosher). and participate in rituals which aren't in congruence with a frum life-style.
When I was first becoming frum I was very interested in sociology and anthropology . My research dissuaded me.

Amarante

Mon, Feb 11 2019, 1:02 pm

naturalmom5 wrote:

Not necessarily that's if one wants to become a field anthropologist. While I have no particular interest in being an anthropologist as a career, I did take coursework and continue to read books.

As the poster suggested, within the field of anthropology, there are different career paths.

And the study of anthropology itself can open up career opportunities in fields that are unrelated to actually practicing anthropology just as History or English Literature aren't necessarily vocation specific but can enable a person to approach things in a certain manner/apply logical reasoning/write cogently that are useful in all different kinds of ways.

nchr

Mon, Feb 11 2019, 1:08 pm

naturalmom5 wrote:

Yes, I am aware that some anthropologists may need to do that, but definitely not all. I work with two anthropologists (1 archaeological and 1 physical anthropologist) and have a frum friend with a PhD in socio-cultural anthropology. It really depends on the subfield. Not all anthropologists study native peoples. The above comment reflects limited frum knowledge of the wide variety of fields and subfields. Biological and physical anthropologists should not eat native foods, unless they are doing that for personal enjoyment; however, socio-cultural or cultural anthropologists may need to. Linguistic anthropologists may choose to integrate into a society, but can attain PhDs without the need for traveling if they so desire. Physical and forensic anthropologists may study topics that conflict with some frum beliefs or may involve shailas, but that doesn't mean there is not a way to do it in a frum manner. There are other subfields as well. I'm sorry you were not given the opportunity to pursue anthropology, since it seems you had an interest in the field.

Last edited by nchr on Mon, Feb 11 2019, 1:16 pm; edited 1 time in total

amother

Green

Mon, Feb 11 2019, 1:15 pm

amother wrote:

Absolutely. BH I have my degrees to fall back on. I choose to be a stay at home because of family illnesses. When DH was nifta, I went back to work because we lost his income but decided the kids need me more. BH I have options and choices. I was able to save a lot of money from working that let me coast while I was raising my family.