Education is one of the most important things a person can have and unfortuantely a lot of frum people cannot fathom its importance. For example, the idiotic HS I went to had a fantastic reputation. One would assume that a fantastic reputation in regards to a school means a GOOD EDUCATION, but in the frum community, it doesn’t. When I joined the school in the 9th grade, the vast majority of my grade has been in the school since Pre 1-A. When it came time to learn Shakespeare I rememeber one girl raised her hand and asked “who wrote the book Shakespaere or Caeser?” and another girl asked “Where was Shakespeare’s theater, London or England?”
Yes… 9th graders asked this… This school has a FANTASTIC rep! 9th graders should frikkin KNOW that Caeser came first, and they DEFINITLY should know LONDON IS IN ENGLAND!!!!!! I mean, REALLY?
Also one year, the school was very upset with the NYTimes for being anti-Israel and having a clear Pro-Arab bias in terms of their news coverage (I was in HS during the scary years of hightened terror attacks in Israel). One of the teachers (our Mechanechet to be exact) came in and told us all about how we should all go home and tell our parents as a sign of protest they should unsubscribe to the Times (Lucky me, my parents weren’t retarded enough to subscribe to it in the first place, given it’s a liberal newspaper and Jews really should know better). A few days later the VERY same teacher walks in with the times in her hand, and lo and behold, she explains “As a sign of protest we stopped subscribing, but we still need to read the news, so we get it from the newstand, they get their money from subscriptions anyway”… I remember thinking “Yes dumby, generally that’s true, but if they see a sudden surge in newsstand sales their advertisers wouldn’t mind as much!” … frikkin idiot was a teacher!!!!
A few years later and more dead-beat graduates, the school continues to have a fantastic reputation and clearly not for its spectactular education (as far as I know most of the teachers are the same)… why?:
Because the average frum person is an idiot. Yes, I said it. The average frum person sends their kid to a school not based on an education criteria (say going to 3 different schools and asking to see what they give their first graders for HW), but rather based on a “reputation”. The reputation, no one really knows what its based on. But it’s a reputation. I mean the girls come out normal? Umm… not from my experience… unless you consider traumatized for life (my case and the handful of other girls) vs. brainless spoiled idiot going for speech in a flooded market and getting married with huge debt to a guy that doesn’t work or has a crapa$$ job that won’t get him far… Really your daughter is screwed eitherway. I still can’t stress enough, the school has a FANTASTIC reputation.
So WHY does frum education suck so bad? Because the average frum person is an idiot.