What to do with your square pegs?

I know parents who shuffle their boys from yeshiva to yeshiva, descending along the line of black hat approved places even when the boys show no inclination for that style of learning or lifestyle and, consequently, get into trouble and even expelled. Of course, the parents mean well, but I do wonder if they are sometimes sacrificing the welfare of their children to the alter of the right label for how they view themselves int he religio-politico spectrum and what their desire not to mar their daughters' shidduch resumes with the mention of a sibling's school that is not RW approved. Chanoch lana'ar al pi darko seems to go out the window when it comes to maintaining appearances.

Another problematic approach I see is the practice of shipping off boys as young as 13 for high schools that require them to dorm. I understanding the yehiva view on this, but still, it gives parents the opportunity to palm off their children on others and not deal with the day to day -- admittedly very difficult and emotionally draining -- business of bringing up a teenager. In fact, it seems to me, that the more problematic the kid, the further he is likely to be sent from home.

*Note this is my Lefty post to balance out my really RW sounding comments posted other blogs today. Read both if you want to really get confused about how to classify my own peg shape, hmm , perhaps an octagon, that would work nicely with all the Maharalian teachings about the number 8, plus from a limited view it would look square while from another view, it may look more round.

Comments

Lion of Zion said…
"descending along the line of black hat approved places even when the boys show no inclination for that style of learning or lifestyle"

there are MO variations on this theme as well, although generally not as extreme
unfortunately there are often few (if any) quality alternatives to the standard modes of education in each respective community.

and i just don't get the whole dorming thing. it's part of why i don't like the "mitzva" of פרו ורבו. i just don't get the point of having so many kids if you're not going to raise them.
miriamp said…
"Another problematic approach I see is the practice of shipping off boys as young as 13 for high schools that require them to dorm."

Well, sometimes, this happens because a small out-of-town community doesn't even have a boys' high school.

That's the situation here for our middle schooler -- one more year of school after this one and he's out of local options for schooling. (Public school and homeschooling both not being reasonable options for us.) So it's go away or commute at least an hour each way, and not be actually home for so many waking hours besides Shabbos anyway.
miriamp said…
LOZ, there's an awful lot of raising before 13 too -- and if we do wind up sending our oldest away for HS, I certainly don't intend to be completely out of the parental loop!

I'm raising ALL of my children.

Sometimes raising them means making choices that may limit your direct influence over them, and sometimes it doesn't. The end goal is always to make them self-sufficient (not usually by 13, more like 18) so that they no longer need "raising."
Ariella's blog said…
From a strictly halachic point of view,I would think that one gets credit for the mitzvah of pirya verivya even if one does not perform the mitzvah of chinuch habanim. They are 2 distinct mitzvos. But I do sympathize with LOZ's concern that people want to have the children but not have them with them.
Ariella's blog said…
Miriam, obviously if there is no school in the area, there may be no choice. But in NY an hour's commute is not all that unusual. Should my daughter choose to attend the Manhattan high school for girls, she would have a commute at least that long. The school draws girls from LI, as well as NJ, so they have quite a trip every day. No dorm exists for it. Ot is always seen as the proper thing to send a young boy away but not a girl.
Ariella's blog said…
To elaborate on what I wrote about what LOZ expressed, what resonates is a a sense of abdicating parental responsibility by shipping the kid off.

Someone just shipped off his son to a program in Israel after trying 2 high schools within 3 years. Supposedly the father said that he did what he could and now all he could do is daven. The person telling me this seemed to take this as a positive reflection on the father's being distraught about his son. But I don't see such throwing up of hands (even if they are in prayer) as being altogether positive.
Ariella's blog said…
two comments to the same post on the imamother forum. Here's one:
They're either selfish or stupid.

Better the boy doesn't start resenting (their view of) frumkeit. Better he marries someone like him. Better the girl knows who she is (really) marrying so they don't spend their life arguing and nagging.
_
Ariella's blog said…
Here's another from the perspective of an educator:


Fitting round pegs into square holes is an overwhelming problem within the Jewish school system -- not just for boys. Virtually every "kid at risk" or "OTD" that I've spoken to has the same story: "I didn't fit in or couldn't handle school, and eventually, I decided that if I'm not good enough for them, then I'll just go elsewhere."

Often, these kids are bright or talented . . . or at least have something important to contribute to the klal. And our institutions often reject them because of relatively petty issues. They bristle at wearing a certain type of socks; they aren't considered deferential enough to their teachers; they don't have the same interests as their peers, etc.

I wish more educators took a more balanced approach. Suggest a little more freedom, and you'll find yourself accused of being a permissive, anything-goes hippie. And meanwhile, we continue to lose these kids . . .
Chaim B. said…
R' Dessler in Michtav acknowledges that the system of Litvishe yeshivos, unlike the Torah im Derech Eretz approach, is designed to cater to an intellecual elite and produce gedolim. Better 999 fall by the wayside and 1 super-gadol emerge from the system than to water down the learning and produce 1000 ba'alei batim. The problem is in Europe, at least until the 19th century, falling by the wayside meant being stam a Jew in the ghetto like everyone else. Today, you can fall a lot further.
Orthonomics said…
I know of a boy that had been send away to something like 5 schools in 4 years (and, no, he wasn't anywhere near graduation). There was a local co-ed modern Orthodox high school, but it did not meet with the parents approval. I understand that this high school wasn't ideal for the family and his parents, but I simply can't understand taking a boy who isn't attached to his parents and their values and having him move from school to school to school because nothing was working. The boy claims he would have liked to have gone to the local school and claimed he was interested in trying the challenging general studies coursework.

I'm not a parent of a teenager, so perhaps I don't fully understand the challenges of teenagers. But, personally I don't believe that young kids are well served by being in peer groups for which the supervision will be limited, no matter how hard admin tries.
>The problem is in Europe, at least until the 19th century, falling by the wayside meant being stam a Jew in the ghetto like everyone else. Today, you can fall a lot further.

Rav Dessler wasn't talking about any Livishe yeshiva model which existed prior the 19th century!

When was he writing, in the late 40s? He was describing the Litvish reality of the 50 or 75 years before that time. And there was a long way to fall then, even deeper than smoking a little weed on shabbos and not completing a high school diploma.
Chaim B. said…
Mississippi, you are right -- I stand corrected.

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