America is simultaneously the richest and poorest country in the world. Richest because it has the world’s largest economy and highest standard of living. Poorest because of a toxic culture that exploits women, worships damaged celebrity, and addicts children to money and materialism.
What America needs is a healthy infusion of values, which can only come from a values-based education. But due to the brick wall that has been constructed between church and state, the public schools have been sanitized of teachings pertaining to responsible social values that are the hallmark of a religious education. A country that does not instill within its young a sense of destiny and purpose will founder.
The pendulum has swung so far in one direction that even the pledge of allegiance is being questioned as to its constitutionality, since it mentions God.
What’s left are only the parochial schools that have been deputized with the task of conveying values to our children.
The problem, of course, is that most parents simply can’t afford the tuition, which is skyrocketing. And parents who wish to raise kids with a spiritual and values-based education are doubly punished by having to pay high property taxes, not one penny of which can go to pay the high tuition.
How ironic it is that parents who wish to instill within their children a passion for ethical virtue are penalized for their efforts.
But none of this is going to change any time soon. There is a fledgling voucher movement in America that would allow parents to direct their education stipend to the school of their choice. But it has gained little traction and is not a central campaign issue for any serious politician.
A radical solution must therefore be sought.
Every time the issue of funding of parochial schools is raised, the traditional knee-jerk reactions occur. Conservatives holler that the government must fund faith-based educational models. Conversely, liberals circle their wagons to protect the sacrosanct separation of church and state.
The merits of the issue can never be thoughtfully discussed. It’s like a bull reacting to a red cape.
To provide the religious education that should be the birthright of every American child, I propose that the three major religions of the United States — Judaism, Christianity and Islam — start local superfunds of education in every community, to provide a free parochial education for every student that seeks it. In the same way that going to church is free (even as people volunteer to pay membership dues), the same should be true of receiving religious instruction in school.
A values-based education should not be the preserve of the rich, and knowledge of a higher power should not be the inheritance solely of the well-heeled. This is an objection that can be raised against all of America’s great religions. How will kids find God if they are not raised with it, and how can they be raised with it when the full extent of their religious commitment is not daily exposure, but services once a week?
This absence is especially acute in the Jewish community, where numerous studies have proven that the strongest bulwark against assimilation is a Jewish education. Period.
Nothing can guarantee the survival and continuity of the Jewish people more than the Jewish day school movement. Will we allow the foundation of our people to founder because of unaffordable tuition? And if trips to Israel for Jewish teenagers are now covered free-of-charge as part of a Jewish ‘Birthright,’ then should not a Jewish education be the same?
Intensive Jewish education is for the most part available only to well-off families or those who are prepared to undergo the sometimes humiliating exercise of going before scholarship committees to prove that they cannot afford tuition.
The leadership of every faith should gather up its important philanthropists and begin the fund with multimillion dollar contributions that should then inspire the rank and file to open their wallets as well.
If this model were duplicated across the United States, with every religious community taking charge of its own children’s education, the cultural conditions prevailing in the United States would change dramatically. A generation of kids accustomed to deeper and more wholesome fare will not readily gravitate to the toxic offering of today’s exploitive culture.
But if the religious leadership won’t decide on strident, sweeping and bold initiatives now, then we risk passively ceding the value systems of our civilization to Hollywood and Wall Street. Educating our children in something wholesome and spiritual is our very first priority.
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is the host of TLC’s ‘Shalom in the Home’ and the author of a brand new book by the same title. His Web site is www.shmuley.com.
CopyrightJ, the Jewish news weekly of Northern California