Secular Education in Yeshivas?

A fight against secular education that is still prevalent today began around 4 years ago when a complaint was filed in 2015 with New York City’s Department of Education. The group leading the complaint was made up of 52 yeshiva graduates, parents, and teachers who felt that Judaism schools did not receive the “substantially equivalent” secular education they deserved. The “substantially equivalent” education they were referring to consisted of subjects that went beyond religious teachings, the complaint also included that the students of these schools were not being taught sufficient English in their daily teachings. As a result of this complaint, came the Parents for Educational and Religious Liberty in Schools (PEARLS). The parents group has come together to ensure religious liberty in places like Yeshivas, which maintain judaic teachings. 

For the last few months, Yeshivas have been fighting to keep their schools as non-secular as possible, with debate on both sides fighting for changes in their educational systems. Yeshivas are places of academics for Talmudic law. Yeshivas have large populations all over the state of New York with higher rates of visibility in burroughs like Brooklyn. 

Although Yeshivas are private educational schools, they collect money similar to public schools that comes from taxpayer funds. This money helps fund private schools with transportation, textbooks, and special education services. This investment in Yeshiva education has recently seen much controversy because of failure to provide secular education that resembles education seen in public schools. Certain guidelines had been put in place in November of 2018 that made it so that staff members from public school districts would visit the nonpublic schools in the state every five years to determine whether the schools were providing enough instruction in all of the subjects required by state law. Although the schools were only visited once every five years, the one visit could dictate whether or not a school kept government-funded services like textbooks and transportation. 

The question at hand is whether the government should intervene and set rules of educational curriculum for private non-secular education such as within Yeshivas. Does this intervention violate Jewish schools’ freedom of exercise rights? This last April 18th, a state judge in Albany nullified what guidelines had been set up to monitor private schools by the Education Department. This has enabled private schools to create their own curriculum, leaving the instruction of secular education up to the discretion of the private schools. Although the private schools call this a win, the Department of Education has not stopped fighting for new guidelines and regulations to be enacted all over the state of New York. 

This has caused other private schools such as Catholic schools and secular private schools to come together and challenge the ongoing battle. Just today on December 9th, an article was released which depicted PEARLS as a group that teaches children and families to fear secular education. The article also claims that PEARLS is playing on the fears of people who grew up hearing family stories about the Holocaust, to increase fear of secular education. PEARLS has denied that their campaign is dishonest and there is a lot of controversy surrounding the methods the parent group uses to address their ultimate goal of non-secular education. 

Although there is a lot of controversy regarding the methods used by the group, I do agree with the Parents for Educational and Religious Liberty in Schools. Monitoring and creating curriculum guidelines for non-secular schools is a direct violation of the schools’ freedom of exercise rights. To better understand this case we can look to Wisconsin v. Yoder. In this case, Amish families were prosecuted for not sending their children to school after the eighth grade because of their religious beliefs. The court ruled in favor of the Amish and found that the free exercise of religion under the First Amendment outweighed the state’s interests in compelling school attendance. This case sets a precedent for how we should look towards private schools in the state of New York. Similar to the Yoder case, private schools in New York should not have to fall under state regulation that places all areas of education together under strict monitoring. Families have chosen to place their children in private religious and private secular schools to create their own curriculums, which should not be monitored by public districts. By allowing public school district officials to enter private educational spaces and decide if the curriculum taught is sufficiently secular is not neutral and is favoring secular education over private education.