Although New York City education officials are investigating claims that students at dozens of hasidic yeshivas receive inadequate instruction in English and math, advocates are skeptical much will change because the haredi community is so powerful politically due to its bloc votes.
WNYC and The Jewish Week report in part four of their exposé on the scandalous state of haredi education about the failure of New York City politicians to act to enforce the law that requires private schools to provide students with education that is the close equivalent of what good public schools provide.
But in the WNYC report, Amy Sara Clark, the Jewish Week's deputy editor, is wrong about the Amish case she mentions (Yoder), if memory serves me.
Unlike what Clark claims, the court allowed Amish secular education to stop at eight grade for several reasons, including that the Amish were self-supporting and didn’t rely on government welfare and other programs to get by. However, with hasidim, the opposite is true. And there was also the issue of how much education an Amish farm laborer needs to get by. But hasidim aren’t farm laborers or porters or the like, and they're not generally cobblers or tinsmiths or barbers or working in other professions that require little education. It isn't Fiddler on the Roof anymore and hasn't been for easily 175 years or more – something Clark seems totally unaware of:
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