The Good, the Bad and the Ugly--the State of Yeshiva Education Today--part #1

Yeshivas (and by this I am referring to elementary and high schools) have long been comparing themselves to the public school system. And for just as long they have been saying that the education they offer is superior to the public schools and that their students are better educated then public school students are. And once upon a time in the long ago past this may actually have been true. But as a blanket statement it is no longer true today.


Yes, there are still some schools with high educational standards whose students are well educated. For the most part these schools are "out of town" schools across the country, although a few, very few such schools still remain in the New York area, and they tend to be more to the "left" then to the "right." Out of town schools tend to be smaller with a smaller group of students to draw from. Their populations are more diverse. The parents in these schools are more involved and more vocal in expressing satisfaction or dissatisfaction with what is going on in school, and the schools must listen. The boards of these schools wield more power over major decisions made by the school administration than do the boards in New York. Limudei kodesh and limudei chol are both given equal treatment or close to it.


And then there is New York. We educate the largest number of students in yeshivot in the country, and we are falling down on the job. I cannot hope to cover all the problems in one posting, so let me begin with limudei chol, and with the teachers of limudei chol.

Decades back the limudei chol teachers in yeshivot were all taken from the ranks of public school teachers with rare exceptions. Because of this they were all college educated and state certified.They all had masters degrees. While many were Jewish, many were not. And even among the Jewish teachers, many were not frum. In fact, many of the more right wing yeshivot preferred that any Jewish teachers not be frum--they were not looking to show their students "role models" who were teaching limudei chol.

My first teaching job came while I was still in college. A bais yaakov school needed a substitute teacher for the regular third grade teacher who had just had a baby. The principal hired me after a lengthy phone conversation but had never seen me. The first few days of school were a real eye opener for me. There I was teaching English grammar and social studies in English, Yiddish and Hungarian. The English staff was also an eye opener. They were all middle aged or older women, some clearly not Jewish, the others definitely not frum, all of them veterans of the public school system. The weather was hot and the English principal was wearing a near sleeveless blouse. Nonetheless, I was teaching the state accepted curriculum for third grade.

All was well until the Menahel saw me. He was not happy. I was clearly frum but also clearly not Williamsburg Bais Yaakov frum. And I was teaching English. The menahel clearly did not want me in the school, but for the first two weeks or so he couldn't figure out a way to get rid of me. He then hit upon the perfect reason: I did not yet have a college degree. I was allowed to finish out the third week and then was let go.

Fast forward a bit. I have the college degree and also am working in the book editing field. Yet, I still keep coming back to teaching, something I really love doing. And I am still seeing the public school teachers teaching limudei chol classes. While my children are still fairly young I remain on Staten Island and teach English in a day school there. My son attends school in Staten Island--all the limudei chol teachers are college educated --and my girls commute to Brooklyn, and their limudei chol teachers are all also college graduates. And then my kids get older and I leave Staten Island to Brooklyn for a high school teaching job. And then my eyes are opened to what is becoming the new trend.


While most of us teaching lumidei chol were "older" and therefore college educated, the younger teachers being hired were not. Two were college students, the rest were not. And without exception every woman was frum. One young married woman was teaching science--her qualifications for teaching this subject were that she had "majored" in biology in high school and she was a straight "A" student in the subject in high school. Only one of the math teachers had a college degree. But, as the school said, they were "great" teachers and the students were getting just as much as they needed to get. And the graduates of this school, after they had gone to seminary to get "proper teaching credentials" were going out and teaching in yeshivot around the city, some of them limudei chol. And I went home at night and had nightmares.

And also for the first time I got a new name--I was not a limudei chol teacher nor was I an English teacher: I taught "goyish" subjects. This was sometimes shortened--we were the "goyish" teachers. And the handwriting was clearly on the wall.

In the boys elementary yeshivot female public school teachers had been teaching the younger grades secular studies. This too would change. The push was for only male teachers in the boys yeshivot, elementary and high school, although they were still public school teachers. And then this would also change. The yeshivot wanted only frum male teachers. There were a number of frum males teaching public school so for the most part the yeshivot hired them. And then, yup, this changed. The yeshivot started taking in a few college students to teach and plenty who were not.


So what is the state of secular education teachers in yeshivot today? There is still a core of us, getting older and thinking about retirement, who are college educated and credentialed in the fields we are teaching in. But our replacements are not, for the most part. The shrinking pool of frum girls from New York yeshiva high schools who go to college is being funneled into other fields then teaching. There are lots and lots of girls majoring in the "therapy" fields and hardly any majoring in English or History or Math or Biology or Chemistry. The same for the boys; the small group that goes to college is majoring in Accounting and Computers and Finance, not education or the school-required subjects. [Note: the few boys majoring in the sciences are planning to attend dental school or medical school, not teach.] So, if you don't have frum college educated people trained in the fields that they are going to be teaching in, what do you do? You hire college students majoring in other fields, or you hire non-college students who are "talented," or you hire high school graduates "who need the parnoseh."

The formula seems to be very clear: the more "to the right" a yeshiva ketana or high school has moved, the less "credentialed" the limudei chol staff becomes. And when the core group of us does actually retire, the void will be filled by whom? We are fast moving to the point where "the blind are leading the deaf and the dumb."


The sad truth is that yeshiva ketanas and high schools have devalued secular subjects and thus the people who teach them. Where English as a subject is seen as something the State forces the schools to teach and nothing more, something of little or no value, teachers of English are not valued either. And the same for all the other state mandated subjects. So it doesn't matter who teaches these subjects because the subject matter isn't important.


Has this been your experience? Do you agree or disagree? Let me hear from you.