Yesterday's post was about American Jews making aliyah for the cheap Jewish education they can get here in Israel. Today, I am continuing on the school theme.
The Israeli Knesset recently expanded the Mandatory Education Law so that now education is mandatory for all children through the 12th grade. Schools may not expel students unless they have a replacement education facility for them. The old law mandated education only through the 10th grade. Parents must ensure that their kids attend school and schools must provide education for all children through the 12th grade.
I must admit I don't fully understand the logic of mandating a high school education for every student. First of all, what if a student is disruptive? According to the law, the school may not expel him unless there is an alternative school for him to attend. Clearly, no other school will be willing to take him, so the first school must keep him and do what exactly? Secondly, I am generally opposed to any law, ordinance, or social pressure that expects everybody to do the exact same thing. I don't think that every child is necessarily cut out for school. Most schools involve sitting at a desk for many hours and passively receiving information. A mandatory education law assumes that every child is physically, psychologically, and emotionally prepared to do that. I, however, assume the opposite. I think that the schools as we have them today are a relatively new thing in human history and to expect every student to be capable of attending through the age 18 is asking a lot. Third, I'm not sure why the law needs to demand that parents send their kids to school. I would think that most parents don't need to be told that their kids must go to school- they want them to get an education. I think that Israel probably has one of the highest literacy rates in the world. (According to Wikipedia it's 97.1%) And what if a parent decides that his/her child is best served by leaving school and pursuing some kind of career? Shouldn't there be more room for parents to decide what is in the best interests of their children?
The answer to these questions is that presumably, the society has decided that we will all be better off if everyone has at least a high school education (assuming that all who attend high school get a high school education.) Israel has had a long history of compulsory education, see the Wikipedia entry on "Compulsory Education," here:
Although Plato's The Republic is credited with having popularized the concept of compulsory education in Western intellectual thought, every parent in Judea since Moses's Covenant with God nearly a thousand years prior was required to teach their children at least informally. Over the centuries, as cities, towns and villages developed, a class of teachers called Rabbis evolved. According to the Talmud (tractate Bava Bathra 21a) which praises a sage Joshua ben Gamla with the institution of formal Jewish education in the 1st century AD., Ben Gamla instituted schools in every town and made formal education compulsory from the age of 6 or 7.
But I still think there is a difference between the Torah's obligation to teach one's child and the mandatory high school education for every child. I think the Torah's obligation leaves more flexibility for each parent to decide what is best for his child. Which, I might add, is why I think it is very important for governments to fund different types of schools with different education methods to educate all children, who do not all learn the same way.
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