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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. <br><br>
<font size=3>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. <br><br>
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.
<br><br>
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. <br><br>
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. <br><br>
<Snip><br><br>
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. <br>
<hr>
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</font></div>
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