London – Charedi leaders have voiced concern about the government’s plans to raise the school leaving age from 16 to 18 in a meeting with Schools Minister Nick Gibb.
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A delegation from the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations discussed the potential impact on Charedi youth, who generally leave school by their mid-teens to go to yeshivah or seminary.
But Chanoch Kesselman, executive co-ordinator of the UOHC, said they were “reassured” by Mr Gibb’s response. “He was very supportive,” he said. “He was encouraging about our school system and the way Charedi children turn out as valuable citizens of the community.”
This may be a blessing in disguise. In my opinion this business of kids going to yeshiva at the age of 15 may be a cause for some of ‘system’ failures. Its too much for a person of that age to learn from 8am-10pm. I could be wrong but….
Maybe it would be good for them to STAY in school so that they can learn a trade and not be a burden on Klal Yisroel.
This is insanity…why would they want to push the frum kids out of school at the age of 16 rather than 18. They have enough time to study in kollel after 18 and many never go back to get a college or advanced graduate degree. So what possible reason would there be to deny them the opportunity to at least complete High School so they would at least have basic educational skills so they might be able to function in society and earn a parnassah.
R’ Chanoch Kesselman graduated from Portchester School in Bournemouth UK at the age of sixteen, as did his elder brother, Rabbi Dr Nissan Kesselman, before him.
Before taking smicha, Rav Nissan qualified not only as a solicitor in the British courts, but also as a barrister. (If you don’t know the difference, see Wikipedia!)
If these two illustrious men left school at an early age and did so well for themselves and for the zechus of their dear parents, Eliahu and Malka Kesselman z”l, so can any other young British Jew!
England seems to be bending over backwards catering to every whim of the Charedim. The society as a whole is deeply anti-Semitic and resents it.
Bill Gates dropped out of college. Albert Einstein failed a lot in school. Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of college. William Randolph Hearst dropped out of college. Henry Ford dropped out of HIGH SCHOOL. John D. Rockefeller dropped out of high school. Peter Jennings dropped out of high school. Ronald Reagan dropped out of high school.
There’s lots more on these lists!!!
Its hard to imagine that anyone could object to keeping kids in school through the age of 18. The UK is not some third-world country where they need to kids to work in the fields at age 14 or 16 to support the family. What possible objection could they have to deferring their start of full time torah study for another 2 years so that they can have the benefit of a basic secular education. They are not proposing to require college or graduate school, just a simple high school diploma.
The govt’s plan cannot be frowned upon with anecdotal evidence that such and such didn’t get a high school diploma and “turned out fine” – those are exceptional cases, and the fact that there are a few exceptions rather *confirms* the general rule. There are also people who “turned out fine” from all sorts of initial backgrounds, abusive homes, minimal education and so forth and yet, we would not advocate those to be good starting points simply because there are a few exceptions to a general rule that they end in a poor life.
A high school diploma leads to more options in life and today it’s pretty much the equivalent of what an elementary school literacy was before. Sure than even then there were people who argued it “unnecessary”, but it was a certain civilizational accomplisment the realization that, maybe, people should even be force-fed some options in life rather than allowed to stay ignorant of them. I can see only good in requiring the kids to finish school, intellectually, but also, in a certain way, “developmentally”, because those two years do matter, at that age, and a full time yeshiva can be overwhelming as a general route taken by “everyone”.
BS”D
It would seem that to make such a judgment we should first weigh the benefits and losses of either way; studying in high school till 18 or leaving at 16 to go to yeshivah.
Without any such study the readership here seems to thing that it is a given that a Jew would do better to stay in ‘school’ for two years longer and delay the time when the can be fully immersed in a yeshiva lifestyle including the level of Torah learning that is only available there.
I lack such a study myself so I can only point the readership to some issues and they can decide on their own:
– A yeshiva lifestyle is a foundation for life, a trade is a tool good only to one who will use that particular tool
– Our Yeshivah system has >2000 years of stability, the secular system can’t seem to get one generation to follow in it’s predecessor’s footsteps
– A proper yeshiva education instills responsibility which is a grater guarantee then any education for future success
– To minimize the yeshiva while emphasizing financial stability would be like investing in a music school without teaching a love of music – the Torah is who and what we are, our trade merely supports that.
– One cannot begin too early