Whose Children are They?

Those of us who have lived more than a few decades sometimes find ourselves in the position of saying "It was different in the 'olden' days." One of those differences applies to yeshivas.

True, yeshivas have always had guidelines under which they work. They have had philosophies that governed what they teach, how much of it and when. They have had entrance requirements. They have had a code of behavior for students which they expected the students to adhere to both in and out of school. There have even been things that a school "ossured" for their students. But...for sheer volume, nothing beats today's schools for the rules and regulations that they expect parents to follow. And, in my opinion, a lot of those rules and regulations fall into a gray area between school policy and parental rights, and some of those regulations fall into the area that is clearly marked "parental rights."

First, who paskins for parents? If parents have a Rav who is their posek and who has said "you may do X" and their children's schools say "You may not do X" who are you supposed to follow? Yes, I hear you say "Don't send your children to that school if you don't like the rules they say you have to follow" but it is not that simple. Every set of parents comprises a whole slew of practices. There is not one "standard" hashkafa. Some parents will do X but not Y. Some will do Y but not X. And then along comes the school which says do Z.

It seems that schools are attempting what clothing manufacturers have tried for years before them: one size fits all school rules. Consumers--and manufacturers--discovered that one size fits all usually translates to one size fits no one perfectly or comfortably. One size fits all is only an approximation, not a 100% correlation. But as schools add on layers and layers of requirements for parents of students in those schools, they are trying to build students who are "one size." What they want are clones. Human beings aren't clones of each other, and desiring that they all dress, act, think, speak and be the same is neither possible nor really something to be devoutly desired. Schools are not content to present information to the students and hope that the information "takes"--they are attempting by fiat to take over some of a parent's choices so as to guarantee that students will be "good" examples of a school's hashkafas.

Years back one of the RW schools in Boro Park gave out some rules for class dismissal time for their students. Mothers were not allowed to come to pick up their children wearing any type of head covering but a sheitle. And they were not allowed to drive cars up to the school to pick up their children. You should have heard the conversations city-wide over those regulations. Today, people just lift their shoulders resignedly. Why? Is it really my child's elementary school's job/right to tell me that I can't wear a tichel to pick up my child? Is it their right/job to tell me what kind of tichel I can wear? Can they really decide if a woman is allowed to drive a car or not?

Whose job/right is it to decide what a child can read in their home? Whose job/right is it to decide whether or not a parent can take a child to a library? Whose job/right is it to decide on whether or not a computer will be present in the home, or whether the Internet will be present in the home? Whose job/right is it to decide on whether or not a child can be given swimming lessons, or piano or another instrument lessons? Whose job/right is it to decide what hashkafas will be upheld in the home? Whose job/right is it to decide which nusach a family will daven? (I bring this one up because a school suggested to a parent that because the school davened nusach ashkenaz but the parents davened nusach sfard that this was confusing the child and the parents might want to consider davening nusach ashkenaz. They only "suggested" this nusach change--how much longer before some enterprising yeshiva requires it?) Is it the schools job/right to tell parents that they can only use cholov yisroel? Is it the school's job/right to tell parents that certain hechsherim are acceptable for their students AT HOME and others are not? Is it the school's job/right to tell parents that their children cannot wear certain colors of clothing when not in school? Is it the school's job/right to tell parents that they should not allow their children to play with children who attend other schools with other hashkafas? is it the school's job/right to tell parents that children must go to sleep away camp and which camps the school will accept?

Note: right about now a reader is going "so send your kids someplace else!" Easier to say then to do. No school is an exact perfect fit. And sometimes sheer convenience comes into the equation. Should I commute my kids 4 hours a day to get to a school closer to my hashkafas or should I send them a few blocks away and I'll straighten out the differences at home?

Once upon a time all the above were suggestions that sometimes got made, but not school mandates. Schools recognized that their "customers" were all a bit different. Once upon a time they would have liked to have had all their students following certain practices, but they knew they weren't going to get that. Once upon a time there was a far clearer dividing line between what belonged to schools and what belonged to parents. One of the reasons for the proliferation of so many different yeshivas today, some with very small student populations, is that schools are looking for complete homogeneity in their student bodies. What they don't seem to recognize is that they aren't going to get that homogeneity. But they keep on trying. And when they try, they step squarely on the toes of parental rights.

Here's a thought too. I wonder how many parents who would have otherwise sent their children to yeshivas didn't do so because of this intrusion into their rights as parents? How many sent to a less RW school because they found the schools less intrusive? How many people have we lost from frumkeit because we have mixed up the public and the private or created a school versus home battleground?

Sometimes the fight between schools and parents for primacy in their children's lives resembles nothing so much as two dogs fighting over the same bone. And that bone so clearly belongs to those parents. For the privilege of paying $10,000 a year and up in tuition I also get the privilege of not being allowed to be the primary input into my children's lives? Somewhere down the road a great showdown is coming, and it isn't going to be pretty.