[Avodah] The Importance of Secular Education

[Prof. Levine]

The following is from RSRH's essay  The Relevance of Secular Studies 
to Jewish Education that appears in Volume II of Rav Hirsch's 
Collected Writings.

Now if the Judaism for which we are educating our young need not 
shrink from contact with the intellectual elements of any other true 
culture, it is essential for the future of our youth as citizens, and 
there ore it is a true religious duty, for us to give them a secular 
education. A secular education is a most beneficial help to our young 
in understanding the times in which they live and the conditions 
under which they will have to practice their life's vocation; hence 
it is most desirable also from the Jewish religious viewpoint and 
consequently deserving of warm support. But at the same time, and 
even more important, a good secular education can give our young 
people substantial new insights, added dimensions that will enrich 
their religious training. For this reason, too, secular education 
deserves the support of the religious educator.

There is no need to cite specific evidence that most of the secular 
studies taught at higher educational institutions, including our own, 
are essential to the future vocational careers of the students. There 
seem to be no differences of opinion in this respect. However, any 
supporter of education and culture should deplore the fact that when 
these secular studies are evaluated in terms of their usefulness to 
the young, too much stress is often placed on so-called practical 
utility and necessity. Under such circumstances, the young are in 
danger of losing the pure joy of acquiring knowledge for its own 
sake, so that they will no longer take pleasure in the moral and 
spiritual benefits to be obtained from study.

There is only one point we believe we must mention in support of the 
utilitarian view of secular education: the training of the young in 
skills that will earn them a respectable livelihood as adults is a 
sacred duty also from the Jewish religious point of view. According 
to Jewish tradition, a father who fails to give his child such 
training himself, or fails to provide for such training, is to be 
considered as one who teaches his child to become a dishonest adult. 
Thus, the general education of our youth should be conducted with 
religious punctiliousness even from the viewpoint of his future vocation.

But it seems to us that no thinking Jew, aware of his mission as a 
Jew, should deny that, quite aside from considerations of vocational 
and professional education, it is also essential that young Jews, 
particularly those of our own times, should learn about the factors 
that influence the life of modern nations; in other words, that they 
should be introduced to those branches of study that will enable them 
to acquire this knowledge.

<Snip>

     Even if our present-day contacts with general culture were 
merely passive, as they were in the days of our parents, it would be 
of vital religious importance for us to see that our young people 
should be guided toward that high level of insight which would enable 
them to evaluate, from the vantage point of truth and justice, all 
the personal, social, political and religious conditions under which 
they would have to discharge their duties as Jews and as citizens. 
But now that our young people will be given an opportunity to 
participate in the public affairs of the land in which we live, how 
much more important is it that they should receive the education they 
will need in order that they may enthusiastically embrace all that is 
good and noble in the European culture of our day, within whose 
context they will have to perform also their own mission as Jews. 
Only knowledge, the ability to realize when we have erred in judging 
our fellow men, can guard us from prejudice. Lack of knowledge always 
breeds illusion and prejudice.

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Note the last two sentences in particular.  I think it is most 
applicable to some of things we see going on today in some circles of 
the O world.  YL

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