One of the most important topics discussed by virtually all of the Jewish media is the phenomenon of children from Frum homes dropping observance. And it is happening in every segment of Orthodoxy.
In most cases it is a result of what can be seen as both a wonderful and yet tragic development in our time, the idea of elitism in a world of mass education. Mass education is a wonderful development. Every Jewish child can now get a Jewish education. Elitism is a wonderful idea too since it can provide an environment for the bets and brightest to really flourish. But when these two conditions combine it can and often does produce disastrous results. This was not the case in pre-holocaust Europe. The Yeshivos there were indeed elitist. But they were designed that way by default. The economic conditions of the time and place prevented the kind of mass Jewish education we have today.
Today, mass Jewish education is so great that it has caused an environment of competition that does not work for everyone. With an exploding Orthodox population, natural market forces of supply and demand take over. Standards of admittance are raised to weed out the lower echelon students as schools do not have room for all the applicants.
The lower echelon can be defined in many ways. It can be weeding out those of below or of average intelligence. And in some schools it can be in the form of weeding out those whose observance standards in the home are not in concert with those of the school. As schools continue to raise their standards even the bright students are asked to push the envelope of learning. Some highly motivated students will thrive but others may just feel they are being pushed beyond their limits of patience and ability. And in the Charedi world, add to this the forever increasing religious standards so as to weed out all non Torah influences from their schools. The results of these two phenomena can easily be a student just dropping out.
Parents are driving their children into impossible situations. They are literally shoving down their children’s throats standards that they cannot handle, both intellectually and religiously. Only the most elite of students can make the grade. All other students who are of average intelligence or of even above average intelligence but require a little diversion from their studies are left to fall through the cracks. I believe that this is especially true of Limudei Kodesh studies in the Charedi schools. And what’s the response by many of the educators in these schools? Well, they might say somehing like, "If your child can’t make it in our school, I’m sure they can find one more suited to their level". Translation: Your kid is too dumb for our school. Try the remedial Yeshiva across the street.
No parent is going to accept that. They will end up pushing those children right out of Yiddishkeit. While there are many caring Rebbeim who see every student as an individual, no matter what level of intelligence or motivation, Torah education has become increasingly more about how fast we can develop a student's Torah learning or academic study to the highest possible level. Add to that the rigorous religious requirements that are constantly being increased in the Charedi schools, and is it any wonder that there are so many dropouts? Not to me it isn’t.
But there is another reason young people drop out of observance that is little discussed. It is the inability for Rabbeim to deal with legitimate questions of faith and belief. This was even true back even in my day when the other two issues weren’t such a problem.
Questions of faith are completely discouraged. Anyone daring to ask a questions like these is usually just brushed aside. Often an answer will be something along the lines of, “You’re not allowed to ask questions like that.” That may work for some people, but for thinking people with serious questions it has the opposite effect. There have been many people that have testified to this as being the primary reason they left observance. These are the so called skeptics that find themselves unable to find answers to serious questions of faith. They have searched and have been unable to find them in the world of observant Judaism. I have been told more than once by many a skeptic that, had their educational experience been more open to questions of faith, and had them dealt with honestly they might not be the skeptics they are today. What happened instead was a brushing off with unsatisfactory answers.
I think this is an important factor to consider in the “dropout” problem, especially when one’s mind is beginning to develop to a more adult and critical level of thinking in high school. I’m not sure if educators are dealing with it at any level yet, but they should be. Often the best and the brightest among us have these kinds of questions... questions about contradictions of Torah and science, faith and reason.
These questions require honest answers. Such questions should never be brushed off or condemned. And certainly no student should ever be lied to. There are many ways to handle contradictions between faith and reason; Torah and science. Some questions can be answered, and some cannot. An honest “I don’t know” will often go much further than a fudged answer that a bright student will see right through.
I don’t know that all the formally Frum skeptics around today could have been prevented from their skepticism by a better and more honest approach than the fudged or evasive one that was so common in the past. Probably many of them could not. But I am certain that an honest approach would have been more successful in at least some of those cases. Are Mechnchim still turning off serious students with serious questions? I think it is an important question for educators to discuss.
The fact is that many skeptics are secretly so… living religious lives, sending their own children to religious schools. But they remain totally skeptical about fundamental beliefs in God.
These Orthodox Jewish skeptics contain some of the brightest minds among us. It may be too late for many of them, but it is not too late for the very young who may very well have some of these same questions someday. It behooves our educators to learn how to deal with these questions and not let them slip away.
modified at 3:58 PM CST 2/26/07
