An 'F' for a Flawed View of Public Education

Rabbi Boteach

and I share a number of experiences and concerns. I, too, spent a large part of my life in England. Like him, I have a child who spent a good part of her education attending a Jewish day school. While I only had one child to finance as opposed to his seven, I certainly understand the great difficulty of supporting children at expensive Jewish private schools (there was also the need to pay for Jewish summer camp!). Like him, I felt the spiritual and moral importance of a Jewish education for my child. And like him, I yearn for a society-indeed a world-where children are educated in the belief that life is more than the pursuit of money and recognition. I also share some of his concerns about public schooling in the United States as places that sometimes fail to provide safe and ethically uplifting environments for many children.

But Rabbi Boteach's personal travail has fueled an outrage that clouds his thinking about the underlying raison d'etre of public education. He offers a far too rosy picture of Jewish education, and sadly, employs racist stereotypes and distorted, blood-curdling images of public schools to make his argument.

First, it needs to be said that there is no easy equivalence between attendance at religious school and one's moral character. Parochial schools in America, of all stripes, have a long and shameful history in providing a refuge for those parents who have supported the process of "white flight" from diverse schools. It is well-documented that they have allowed and facilitated the detestable racial, class, and ethnic segregation in American society. As Jews, we especially understand the centrality of social justice to an ethical world, and as such we must face the way religious schools-including Jewish schools-can provide a vehicle to deny our responsibility for moving toward a more just and inclusive community.

Second, honesty demands that we acknowledge that the imperative to provide a fast track toward the Ivy League is every bit as important in the goals of most Jewish schools, and in the minds of parents who send their children to them, as any more laudable ethical pretension. Such schools typically provide an environment that privileges one small group of young people with all the advantages that money can buy.

Of course, Rabbi Boteach's crude depiction of drug addicts and liquor store robbers as the inevitable product of the "dangerous jungles of public schools" is shamefully inaccurate and grotesquely racist. I recall many years ago as a lay chaplain to one of Her Majesty's prisons visiting the Jewish inmates on Passover. I remember trying to convince my mother that in the jail were Jews--strictly Orthodox, hitherto active members of their synagogues--who were now incarcerated for bilking people of their hard-earned money, fraud, theft, even murder. Yes, Rabbi Boteach, religiously socialized Jews commit crimes too. Nor should we forget that some of the most hideous insensitivity and human indifference have been demonstrated by religious Jews in Israel toward their Palestinian neighbors. Perhaps more to the point, however, is the fact that Jewish religious schools have no shortage of the usual ethical and social concerns: cheating among students, aggressively competitive and selfish behavior, drug abuse, or overly materialistic priorities.

My daughter's public schooling made her a better Jew
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