The JC’s article of March 11 about the ultra-Orthodox yeshivot’s fight to resist secular studies prompted me to read a very long Substack by Rabbi Gratt – one of the leaders of the protests against the Bill – about the legal challenge he proposes to mount. And I thought: “Good luck with that.”
The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill aims to widen access to success by compelling a local authority to keep a register of home-educated children, which will include Charedi children at non-registered schools. The local authority must keep a register of how much time is spent teaching the child and who is doing it. It can visit the home, and the parents must cooperate. If the child’s education is not suitable, steps can be taken to ensure it is suitable.
The objections of the Charedi community, as expressed by Rabbi Gratt, and PR Shimon Cohen strike me as confused and contradictory.
Mr Cohen says the Charedi approach is “no less legitimate” than the mainstream. Yeshivot provide “structure, safeguarding, supervision and strong social opportunities. Home schooling is undertaken by parents, as is their legal responsibility.”
Well, the Bill allows the Charedi community to prove those assertions to the local authority. What’s the problem? If the homeschooling is solid, as Mr Cohen says, then why not bring it into the schools? If the paid teachers lack the skills, the parents can have a rota. More time for everyone. More fun for the children.
Rabbi Gratt’s problem is different. He says it is unfair for the state to dictate what a lawful education is for a Jewish child, and the state should recognise the traditional yeshivah method of teaching, “which is older than the English state itself”. He proposes that no one acts unless the child is referred under existing powers.
That sounds like a “no” both to secular studies, and any state-imposed values. It is also factually dubious – perhaps 1066 isn’t on the home-education radar. And, without a register of children not at school, referral is both almost impossible, and arbitrary.
On that basis, Rabbi Gratt will lose a legal challenge. In 1985, the Court said a religious minority would provide a “suitable education” if it equipped children for life in their own community, and if they left. “Suitable” will now be assessed against the aims of the Bill.
In 2005, the Court stopped Christians who believed in corporal punishment from thrashing children in school, because the child’s human rights included what the state saw as a minimum standard of behaviour, which the state would impose on adults, whether they liked it or not. That marked the increasing recognition that children should be protected: from abuse by safeguarding standards; and now, from a lack of success by imposing minimum standards on secular education.
So, in my view, empowering the ability to leave will be key. Research carried out by Nahamu, which campaigns against religious extremism, suggested the majority of boys in Chasidic yeshivot (girls can learn secular subjects) aren’t being taught secular subjects. Some aren’t even being taught English. Yet any Charedi adult wishing to live outside their community must learn new skills, new ways of thinking, new concepts.
That requires knowledge. As a long-time learner, I agree that Talmud equips you to learn. But it doesn’t teach the substantive knowledge required. The Act will ensure that knowledge is taught.
Doing so does not, in my opinion, breach parental rights. There is no right to choose a curriculum which disadvantages a child unless he stays in his community.
It seems to me that both Rabbi Gratt and Mr Cohen, fearing the education system might ultimately empower children to leave the Charedi world, are really arguing for a right to control children. But the success the Bill aims for – whilst it may well include material well-being, happiness, religious obligation and lots of other issues, as well as secular education – is not achieved when in Bruce Springsteen’s words: “They bring you up to do just like your Daddy done”. If the Charedi world wants its people to stay, it will have to win the argument.
Simon Myerson is a KC based in Leeds
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