Global Courant
STORY: Step into the classroom of an Orthodox Haredi Jewish school in London
where it is feared that the student’s faith-based education is at risk of state interference.
(Rabbi Hershel Gluck)
“Leave us alone, let us be ourselves so we can keep our identity.”
(Rabbi Asher Gratt)
“This is actually a campaign to completely eradicate our belief in God.”
15-year-old Yossi Hamilton and his peers delve into sacred texts
as their Jewish ancestors did for over two thousand years.
It’s part of a curriculum that he says prepares him for his future.
“Actually, I want to spend the rest of my life, or as long as possible, pondering the Talmudic texts, but as long as I can, and then I can go into the workforce and add to the English economy,”
This special faith-based education – taught in private schools or at home – is of great importance to his strictly Orthodox community.
There are 80,000 Haredi Jews in Britain,
many of them are descendants of Holocaust survivors and are extremely protective of their way of life.
But the community – along with some Muslim and Christian groups in Britain – is deeply alarmed by a new proposal, backed by the British government, to register all homeschooled children.
While the proposed new legislation would have no direct impact on students at schools such as Hamilton’s,
faith groups see it as the state exerting more control over education and fear it could eventually lead to new rules about what children are taught, both at home and at school.
Rabbi Zvi Levovics is one of the headteachers at Hamilton’s school:
“We have been around for thousands of years, as you know if you read history. And the only reason we have survived until now is because of education and once that is uprooted or undermined, we will lose our children. So we really feel it’s a threat.”
In Britain, all children from the age of five must attend full-time education.
They can be in a public school, private schools or homeschooling.
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The government says it needs the new legislation because there is no legal obligation to report whether a child is being homeschooled.
It is estimated that by early 2023, more than 86,000 children were homeschooled.
Conservative MP Flick Drummond is behind the bill in England.
She says the legislation is not aimed at religious communities.
“I want every local government to know exactly where the children are in their neighborhood, where they are and how they are being educated. They can’t say, you have to do this, you have to do that. That’s not the point of the bill. There are children falling through the net at the moment, I’m really worried about them.”
As soon as the local authorities know that a child is being homeschooled, they can – just like in schools – check whether the quality of the education is adequate.
The definition of ‘suitable’ – and who defines it – is the sticking point.
At present it is defined as including numeracy, reading and writing and skills to equip them for life within the wider community.
Hamilton’s North London secondary school was deemed to have failed to meet this mark.
The apprentice’s nine-hour workday begins with intensive learning of the Talmud, a study of Jewish law,
and is followed by core subjects such as math and English, as well as sports.
But classes omit the sex education and sexual diversity modules typically taught to their secular peers,
that the school considers inappropriate or contrary to biblical teachings.
Students use computers, but smartphones are not allowed.
The boys leave at the age of 16 to pursue advanced religious studies before marriage and a career in commerce.
An inspection by Ofsted – the government’s education standards agency – found that the education at the school paid insufficient attention to respecting gender and sexual orientation, saying it limited the preparation of pupils for life in modern Britain .
Despite assurances from the government about the registry’s intentions, the Haredim such as Rabbis Sher Gratt and Hershel Gluck fear interference.
(Rabbi Hershel Gluck)
“And Judaism to us is our identity. It is the essence of who we are. And therefore denying the Jewish community the opportunity to pass over, to pass on Judaism from one generation to the next, which is, the very basis of what this legislation is trying to accomplish is denying the very air we breathe from the Jewish community.”
(Rabbi Asher Gratt)
“Children will be forced to violate basic religious laws and values and this would endanger our way of life. This is actually a campaign to fully punish our belief in God.”
(Yossi Hamilton)
“It’s very good that the government is trying to raise the standard of education across England. But instead of looking at what they think we should be doing, they should be looking at the results. The guys who are coming are they good, are they emotionally healthy Can they join the staff Do they enjoy what they do Etc etc and then they should base their evaluation at the school on that rather than what they think we should be doing .’
