Community Magazine October 2014

26 Community magazine HARD LOOK DEBATING THE PRESSING ISSUES IN OUR COMMUNITY THIS MONTH’S TOPIC: Is Changing Schools a Good Idea or a Bad Idea? Speaker: Just Lee Cause FINAL WORD: If circumstances compel switching a child out of a school, the parents should not start lobbying other parents to follow suit. Such pressure may lead those other parents to make the wrong decision for their children. J. Fide J. Cause There are a myriad of factors that should affect parents’ decision to move their child to a different school. Certainly, if a child is experiencing social or educational difficulties in his current framework, considering alternatives is the responsible thing to do. However, if a parent considers switching his or her child to a school because it is the new, in vogue, “flavor of the month” institution, this most definitely should not be done. To alter your child’s trajectory because there’s another school in town where the grass seems greener is a gross abuse of parental oversight. Unfortunately, parents today swap schools as if it were a game of “go fish,” and the consequences for the children can be catastrophic. Let us borrow an analogy from a rather peculiar context: baking. To bake a cake in a particular shape, one inserts the batter into a specially-crafted stainless steel or plastic former. It is then placed in the oven, which needs to be set at just the right temperature. For best results, the former must be placed on the right shelf and baked for the appropriate amount of time. Now, let’s say one decides to remove the cake midway through the baking process, shove the half-baked, half-batter substance into another former and place it into an entirely new oven, on a different shelf, set to a different temperature. How do you think that “cake” is going to look after all is said and done? When children pass the threshold of a school for the very first time, they begin to adapt to that environment, make friends, adopt a set of ideals, and develop their personality based on the circumstances in which they were placed. Pluck them from the pack, and their entire world as they know it gets thrown into uncertainty – or worse, gets turned upside down. They start to question all that they know, and all that they ARE. Playing this game for the mere sake of bragging to your friends, “My son/daughter is in Yeshivat such-and-such” is sheer selfishness, an attempt to score social points at the expense of your child’s wellbeing. Educationhas a sacred anddelicate anatomy, and adulterating it with one’s own social preferences is a dire mistake many parents are making today. You don’t jeopardize a child’s future to join someplace “cooler” or newer. True, many people who changed schools midway through elementary school will say that the switch was vital to their spiritual development, and that they would not have turned out observant had they not switched. But more often than not, this response is as much a critique on the first school as it is a compliment to their latter choice. However, if an honest person would be asked if he would have been better off had he stayed in his original school, he would likely reply, “Had certain, basic, elements been improved, there is no doubt I would have benefitted tremendously from staying put.” Generally speaking, all schooling issues can be resolved through appropriate parental intervention. Yes, there are times when the school and the parents are so far apart that the child must learn elsewhere. But these are the exceptions, not the rule. Most of the time, a bit of patience and common sense can help a child succeed and flourish in his or her current school.