The article explains that the crisis comes mostly from the cuts in government funding. One of the biggest issues relates to the core curriculum. The government is refusing to fund any school that does not adhere to a core curriculum (e.g. English, math, science, etc.). The Charedi schools absolutely refuse. The Charedi schools also have a much longer school day then regular schools and again the government does not want to pay.
Basically the Charedim want to have their cake and eat it. On one hand, they want to have complete freedom to do whatever they want, including curriculum, hours, etc. and on the other hand they want the government to fully fund them. They should have seen this coming. I for one, am surprised at how long the government funded Charedi schools that teach no secular studies.
In every other country in the world the Charedi schools teach the core government curriculum in addition to whatever they want and no one complains and the students don't seem to be affected negatively.
The question now is how will the Charedi world react.
With new elections coming soon, the Charedi parties are going to try to get all this money back in return for joining the government. Depending on the election results this may or may not work.
2 comments:
it will work, at least partially.
No one party is big enough to ignore the religious parties. Whether Likud, Kadima or Labor win the upcoming elections, they will need at least Shas, if not also UTJ, in order to build a coalition. That means the electee, whomever it will be, will have to give in to at least some of the demands for money....
It's hard to sympathize with the Chareidi bloc from here in the US, where only one in fifty of yeshiva boys, even in the black hat yeshivos, avoids high school. Perhaps an alternative would be to administer proficiency tests irrespective of formal classwork, and provide funding if a certain level of proficiency is demonstrated, as is done in some yeshivos here, e.g., Yeshiva of Staten Island.
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