Shmuley kills my Brain (and plagiarizes himself in the process)

What is it with Conservative pundits? You'd think that today, of all days, they'd be touting all the great things about America (a-la FOX). But instead, we're just hearing gripes.

Enter Shmuley Boteach, rabbi to America in general and Michael Jackson in particular. If there's one thing we can always count on Shmuley for, it's that he's guaranteed to have something interesting to say. This week, though, Shmuley's a little disappointing, ranting about one of his pet gripes, that religious education in America isn't free.

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.

Hang on, America's toxic culture is the "worst" in the world? Even if we're to claim that celebrity-obsession is worse than, say, lauding jihadism or totalitarianism (Pakistan, China?), when did our problems become 'the worst'? Ever hear of the UK?

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, public schools have been prevented from teaching the social values that are the hallmark of a religious education. A country that does not instill in its young a sense of destiny and purpose will founder.

So, first, you claim that people can only learn values through school (so much for autodidacts). And then you argue that it should be the job of the public schools to teach them? The schools that can't even get things like history, geography and basic math right? Oh yeah, this'll be great. Incidentally, Shmuley, how exactly would one teach values curriculum? How does one get a credential for values? Who decides this? Haven't you been paying attention to all the hoopla being stirred up over schools just trying to teach sex ed?

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. The public school systems do not allow even the hint of an allegiance to a higher power who demands virtuous action and moral excellence.

Maybe it's just me, but having gone to private schools my whole life, and secular ones at that, I don't see how God OR a pledge have any role (or at least, necessity) in the classroom. I just don't. If nothing else, my experience would seem to demonstrate that the absence of such things leads to degeneracy (though perhaps my anonymous Abir commentator would disagree). Besides, as Alan Dershowitz pointed out so many years ago, letting religion into the classroom opens up a major can of worms that, frankly, we don't need there. If you include God, then you need to include everyone's deities. You have to deal with determining which religions and practices are legitimate, and the inevitable clashes that will sprout up between the kids. Why bring that into the schools? For what benefits?

What's left? Parochial schools have been deputized with the task of conveying values to our children.

Schools shouldn't be where parents turn to teach them values in the FIRST PLACE! The parents, family, and community should be giving them values, not some random teacher.

The problem, of course, is that most parents simply can't afford skyrocketing tuition. 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 for tuition.

Sorry, Shmuley, but there's no reason my money should go towards sending your kids to yeshiva or some other kids to a madrassa, anymore than your money should go towards paying for MY family's jaunts to a clambake or a hunting trip. Everyone deserves an education, but religious training? That's extra.

Thomas Jefferson said that a liberal democracy relies on enlightened citizens for its survival. How ironic, then, that parents who wish to instill in their children a passion for ethical virtue are penalized for their efforts.

Requiring you to pay your way is not a penalization, Shmuley. You are making a choice, and it's particularly galling to hear someone as financially successful as you bitch and whine about how hard your life is because you have to pay taxes AND send your kids to school. Incidentally, Shmuley, this is not a religious versus secular thing. My parents were in the same boat as you for all my education, and they didn't consider it a form of secular oppression.

This isn't a religious discrimination thing, this is a basic consequence of paying tax. You pay taxes and they're used for public institutions, sometimes even including some you may not wind up using. You bitching about paying for schools is just as stupid as a subway commuter complaining about having to pay for road asphalt and stop signs. That doesn't mean the state is discriminating against them for not having a car, it's just a consequence of making certain choices.

A radical solution must therefore be sought. The status quo cannot be preserved. If it is, American kids will continue to be raised with a materialist education that acknowledges their minds and bodies but ignores their spirit and character.

And because, of course, everyone who goes to a religious school comes out as an exemplary member of the community...

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 education superfunds in every community to provide a free parochial education for every student that seeks it.

And how are you going to figure out where to send the kids? Who gets to decide this? Which Christians are going to get to determine which churches/schools are legitimate? Or the Jews? Good luck getting Orthodox rabbis to sign on to asking their communities to sponsor a Reform classroom. You're absolutely nuts if you think that you're going to get unified interdenominational cooperation on projects as widespread as what you're envisioning. And what about families with multiple religious traditions? Or with none? Why should their kids be deprived of values-education just because they don't want to have to learn them through a God-filter?

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.

And, of course, only people who go to religious schools will know anything of either values or a higher power. You'd think with all the kids going to public school in this country, there'd be a heck of a lot more atheists running about.

Again, there's that foolish conflation of religion with values.

CONSIDER the following: rich Catholic kids go to the finest suburban Catholic schools and receive quality educations. They are exposed to religious mentors who nurture not just their minds but their souls. But their poorer peers have to settle for an education where even the mention of God is banned.

A big part of the quality of those educations is the fact that they are well-funded and have good teachers and curriculum, NOT that they teach religion classes- which is why you have parochial schools all over the country whose student bodies include children from OTHER RELIGIONS!

There is scarce justice in a system in which families who affiliate with a great world religion can expose their children to its teachings only once a week on a Sunday because they lack the funds to do so the rest of the week. This is an injustice not only against the children but even more so against the church itself that is bound by such a system to raise even more lapsed than committed Catholics.

Bullcrap. That's like saying it's an injustice to force nudists to put on clothes when they go to school. If you want a specific kind of education that matches your religious beliefs, send your kids to that school. You don't get to demand that other people pay for it, or that schools make extra time to include religion in the classroom. And, again, sending your kid to a public school doesn't mean they're stuck in a giant, secular box for the whole week. If you want to impart values, do it on your own time.

Since when did a religious education become the preserve only of the rich? And this is an objection that can be raised regarding 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 if the full extent of their religious commitment is not daily exposure, but Sunday services once a week?

Since when did a religious education become the responsibility of the state? I would think you'd want to keep the state OUT of religious education, Shmuley. At least your suggestion about the communities doing it themselves by fund-raising has some merit, though it's hardly very realisitc. Incidentally, the argument that the only way to know anything about God or religion is to have it shoved in your face 24-7 is ridiculous.

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 undergo the sometimes humiliating exercise of going before scholarship committees to prove that they cannot afford tuition.

These problems may be true, but the answer to this dilemma is to have the Jews raise money, start those schools and get motivated parents to send their kids there, NOT demand that the government do it for them, especially since the government's not going to have a damn clue what the hell it's doing.

BUT THE SAME truth pertains to the vast numbers of evangelical Christians who, by and large, home-school their children. They do so because they wish to avoid the toxic influences that are inherent in many of the public schools. And who can blame them?

*Raises hand*

Do parents who are adamantly opposed to sex before marriage want their children exposed to a school culture that teaches contraception rather than abstinence? No parent wants to feel that they are sending their children to a school which is inimical to their own values.

So keep your kids home, or start your own schools- just like the yeshivas and madrassas.

Still, there is a price to be paid for educating your children in isolation. Kids need friends to develop social skills and there is a certain camaraderie that only people of the same age group can share. A far better solution would be for Evangelicals to finally begin a serious day school movement, which is at present absent from evangelical life. A superfund administered by the leading evangelical organizations should be able to raise enough funds to provide nearly every Christian child with a religious education, with his peers, in a God-fearing environment.

Oh yeah, it's much better to raise them in same-faith-only enclaves, I'm sure that that will help their socialization. Granted, you have similar problems in any private school environment, but talk about keeping your kids isolated. Hey, let's bring shtetls back, while we're at it!

IF THIS model were replicated across the US, with every religious community taking charge of its own children's education, cultural conditions would change dramatically. A generation of kids accustomed to deeper and more wholesome fare will not readily gravitate to the toxic offerings of today's exploitative culture. The market they will create for more wholesome fare will then influence TV, music and the media to offer something healthier.

Fair enough, Shmuley. But you don't need religion to teach people values, and the suggestion that the only way to impact the "toxic" culture is to infuse religiously minded kids into the market is fallacious.

Incidentally, if this sounds familiar, there's a reason. It's recycled from this article he penned in 2005:

The United States, alone among the great democracies of the world, shows utter contempt to religious parents by making them pay twice for their children's education, refusing to put even a single dollar of their tax money toward their children's religious schools.

Really, Shmuley, at least put in the effort to come up with some new arguments.