Some new ideas

I've been following the story told at Orthonomics about the teachers in the Lakewood school who are on strike because they weren't getting paid, and have read most of the comments. (I don't have the time to read through over too many comments on a single blog topic, even if I do think its interesting.)

Having some intimate knowledge of these things on the side of the not getting paid, or not getting paid on time, this is a topic that speaks home, and in my mind, demands change.

Even in Israel, yeshiva prices are not cheap. Here, schooling is funded by the state, but that only accounts for the very basics - maybe 4-5 hours of school a day? For a kid to be in a dual curriculum school for a full long day (until 3-4 PM), parents need to chip in extra. And from what I hear from my friends with bigger kids, high schools with good quality religious and secular education are hard to come by, and usually are more private than public, even many times requiring their students to board during the week. And the teachers still strike when the rest of the country does.

Anyway, one of the commenters back at Orthonomics mentioned the possibility of kids going to public school, with an after school Talmud Torah. This is the way Orthodox kids used to get their religious education in the US (sorry no sources here, I've got enough time to write, not to do research). Again, as mentioned, it didn't really work - many of those kids grew up to give up kashrut and kippot, Shabbat and Simchat torah, keeping only the basics of Pesach and Yom Kippur. But does that mean that its a failed experiment? What if we tried it again? This time around, you wouldn't be chased down the streets with stones for wearing your kippa to school - I've known kids who do, who are the only kids in their class who do. And these kids would not be. Most likely, some classes might even have a majority of Orthodox kids. It would not be uncool, and might even let in a spirit of openness, understanding, and tolerance that is sorely missing in Orthodox communities.

Possibly this is something that could just save the next generation of US Orthodoxy. I say lets give it a try.

We should try it in Israel too. Like all good American ideas, it will probably get here about 10 years later.