Bloggers are everywhere, sprouting like mushrooms after rain, myself included. A large part of Jewish bloggers are "heimishe" people, mainly men, who are fed up with the way the current system is set up and use their blogs as an anonymous means of ranting against their society. Yet, none of them has the fortitude to do anything more than blog, that is to take steps to make some sort of change.
Now, some of you may say "what can one person do to change all of society?", The answer is plain and simple, start with what you can change, namely, your own family. I believe it to be the case that most of these frustrated types do stay in the same society and then subject their kids to the same schools and Yeshivos they went to, many times the exact same schools with the exact same Rebbeyim/Teachers!
If in your case it was only a teenager who had a hard time in school, and you now realize that the school was not to blame, then if your kid won't have the same problems, send him back there. However, if you have a beef with the society dumbing down your kids, making of them nothing but mindless fools who can't hold a conversation with anybody not wearing a long black coat, THEN DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT! Share some of your knowledge with your kids, spend some time with them, and most of all, tell them about G-d's green earth.
I am aware of the inhibitions society places on us, and I'm not condoning teaching your kids about "the birds and the bees" at 5 years old, but there's a lot of gray area. Telling your kids that what he's learning in school is wrong or stupid does create disdain for his/her teachers and is probably not the right thing to do, so use caution, especially at a very young age.
14 comments:
Tziggy,
Speaking from expirience?
which part?
Hershel, can you elaborate please as to what your hinting?
HT,
Not good enough.
You can't expect a father with 6 kids or more, who works for a living, goes to minyan, and learns a little too, to have to provide a decent education to his children (since the school that's charging him $3600/year per child tuition isn't doing the job).
Sure, everyone tries to do what your seem to be proposing, but the frustration with the current situation is not alleviated by reading about the bald eagle to your child (while his mind goes through daily indoctrination at school, that you want us to carefully undo).
There is a limited amount of time, recourses, energy and support - not to mention that not every Tatty is all that capable of doing this.
I don't disagree with doing what you can - but it doesn't help with the frustration.
If you're unhappy, why dont you just send the kid to a more open minded educational institution?
Maybe even send him to Brooklyn/Touro College when he's older - and he might be a healthier individual.
Frustrated: I don't necessarily mean the state of education currently prevalent in Lubavitch.
YYG: waiting till a child goes to College may be too late. I wasn't referring to actual education, I was talking more of streetsmarts, common sense, etc.
Hirshel,
What DO you mean?
I was refering more to Chasidishe bloggers upset at how society is run today, and how the "leaders" make such fools of themselves and us.
An interesting topic of conversation might be the state of Jewish literature.
Literature expands the mind, but chareidi culture seriously frowns on the practice of peeking into secular books.
In addition, critical writing is unheard of in Jewish publishing - Artscroll books are mostly hype, with anything of interest edited out.
how many chassidish bloggers are there any how? Too much charedi angst and people fall out of the fold...angst doesn't necessarily mean that there are problems in jewish life, perspective is everything...angst is usually accumulated because of the way an individual internalizes life rather than strictly a result of outside factors. in other words maybe individuals are falling apart but the society as a whole is working...
n
make sure not to swallow any sand on the way up.
hershel t,
you are too glib...what do you mean?
"society as a whole is working"
Boy, is that ever a debatable statement.
I personally think that society as a whole is failing.
Shmuel Clemens - nice to see you here. Do be mihaneh the frum blogosphere with more good writing, bivakosho.
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