[Avodah] Public school or non-Orthodox day school?

[T613K at aol.com]

From: "kennethgmiller at juno.com" _kennethgmiller at juno.com_ 
(mailto:kennethgmiller at juno.com) 


> Do not think, "The non-O school provides a good chinuch but we
>  don't want to show support for non-O." Rather, as bad as the
> chinuch  might be in public school, the  education in a non-O
> day school is  /even worse/. [--old TK]

>>It is very unfair to make such blanket  statements. Both schools 
deserve a cursory lookover, at the very  least.<<
 
>>>>
Suppose the choice were sending the kid to a very religious Christian  school 
vs public school, and suppose the secular education and the moral  atmosphere 
in the Christian school were better than what the public school could  
provide -- but the kid has to attend chapel every day and see a cross on the  wall 
in each classroom.  Would you consider sending your kid to this  Christian 
school?  It's "better" than public school, plus the kid will  learn some Bible!

> In public school he won't learn anything about  Judaism at all
> and will be left a tabula rasa, for his parents or  outside
> tutors to fill in later. [--old TK]

>>Surely the  word "later" was included by mistake, as dedicated parents 
will try to teach  their children as much Torah as they can.<<
 
By "later" I meant when the kid gets home from school.
 
As for dedicated parents, they would not live in a place with no day school  
for their children, so the parents in this scenario must be not yet observant 
or  just becoming observant -- and probably therefore not knowledgeable enough 
to  give their kids a Jewish education themselves.

> In the non-O school  he will learn all kinds of sheker, which will
> be exceedingly difficult  to eradicate from his mind later on.
> Much harder to write on a  palimpsest than on a  tabula rasa. [--old TK]

>>I totally  agree with this. But it is only one factor of many.<<
 
>>>>>
What other factors would be so important that it would be worth exposing  
your child to sheker that would fill his mind with an utterly false idea of what  
the Torah is?  The only possible factor I can think of is if the non-O  
school has Orthodox teachers.  



--Toby  Katz
=============



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