I find this situation very interesting.
For years the New York Slimes has been defaming the State of Israel, hiring writers who are self-hating Jews, such as Thomas Friedman and Peter Beinart. These articles drip with pure hate, lies and total fabrications reeking with pure unadulterated antisemitism.
What was the reaction of the Chareidie world? Crickets! Zero, Nada and gurnisht!
Why? Because if it's not about Chareidim they could care less, even if those hateful articles are about their brothers and sisters living in Eretz Yisrael, if it doesn't affect them directly, they don't care. Now that "the Slimes" is going to publish a hit piece against them, they are suddenly up in arms.
And now about the "hit piece"
I am not in favor of government regulations in the curriculum of private schools, period. And I am not a fan of Naftali Moster, the former Belzer Chusid who founded Yaffed, the organization that advocates that Chasidic Yeshivas be given a secular education.
Naftali's father has a collage education, and his mother was a graduate of Yeshiva of Brooklyn, not the typical Chareidie Bais Yaakov. They chose to put Naftali in a chassidishe school, knowing full well that the yeshiva would not teach Naftali any secular subjects. His rants should be directed at his very own parents.
Having said that, I think that all yeshivos should be teaching English, Math, Biology and yes, History.
When i grew up, practically all chassidishe yeshivos thought secular subjects. When the Bobover Rebbe, R' Shlomo z"l decided not to have secular subjects taught in High School, or Mesivta, there was a mass exodus of students from Bobov and most of those students went to Torah Vodaas. In fact, the rebbe's own future son in law, the Bobover Dayan, R' Tauber went to Torah Vodaas for High School.
You ask, but why teach "history?"
Because all Chassidishe Yeshivos already teach history. I'll give you an example, I was talking to a Tosher Chusid, a teenager and I mentioned that I saw the Tosher Rebbe when he came to Crown Heights. Before I could tell him anything else, he told me the exact year the Tosher visited Crown Heights and how long he stayed there for and in whose home, he was at... He then rattled off all the different dates that the rebbe visited Boro-Park, Williamsburg and Israel. I was amazed and asked him how he knew all that, and he told me matter-of-factly that it is taught in yeshiva as a subject. The same thing is in Skver, every teenager knows all the dates of when the Skverer Rebbe visited and which countries he visited. This is part of the Chassidishe curriculum.
Since they are already teaching "history" it wouldn't hurt to add some history of the country that hosts them.
I find it baffling that the American Chassidishe leaders are upset at the Yeshivos and Belz in particular that take government funds in exchange for teaching Math and English. But these same Chareidie leaders take millions of dollars of Federal, State and City funds, for their moisdois.
Well, now this "blood" money is going to take a big bite into their derrières, because the US will not give them money anymore for nothing in return.
It didn't have to come to this, if they would only have continued teaching Math, English, Bio etc., no one would have bothered them. I learned in Chareidie Yeshivas for Elementary and High School, and these subjects were taught without any problems and that generation produced talmeide chachamim, poiskim, Roshei Yeshivois etc.
Yes, today, parents are worried that the State would be requiring them to teach LGBT stuff, but as I read the specifics of the regulations, it states explicitly that they won't be required to teach any subject except for the core subjects.
The "ASS'kanim" claim that Chareidim do well financially without any secular education, while that may be true for "yechidim" a couple of them, the vast majority would starve to death were it not for food stamps, Medicaid and other benefits. According to the last census, New Square, and Kiryat Yoel have the largest population living in poverty. Just walk into any shul during davening and you will hear genuine sob stories of heimishe people living in abject poverty. It's also true that now that the Biden economy is in utter ruin, most Americans are having a hard time managing financially, but at least they have a fighting chance having a basic education, and Im not talking about a college education, I'm talking about basic English and Arithmetic.
