I touched on this a little while ago in a very ranty blogpost.
Well, since that time my fourth grade daughter's teacher got engaged. For those who don't recall (or never knew!) fourth graders are about nine or ten years old. It's when a lot of the "real" learning starts, and school habits are formed. A lot of what the kids are learning is less spoon fed than it was before, and it is really a bridge year to being an "older" girl.
The teacher, who is fantastic, has connected with the girls and they LOVE her, is marrying a guy who will learn for awhile, and there was talk about whether or not she will move to Lakewood after the wedding. She plans to get married around March, which leaves three months of school. Three months where that last step to fifth grade makes a difference.
I don't know if she is going to go or not. All I know is that one young man's idea that he can only be successful if he learns in a place 90 miles from where his wife -to-be has a job, will affect the lives of 28 little, soon to be big, girls. I mentioned before the lack of sacrifice from those who learn,but if one always learns in optimal conditions when he is young and enthusiastic how does he know, if he wants to learn "long-term," that when conditions are not optimal he will stick with it? I am not saying that young men should "test" themselves to see if they can learn in conditions that MAY be less than what they say are optimal. However, if the situation comes up, and when speaking of finishing out a school year it is a finite amount of time, what better way to regain a "geshmak" for learning than trying in adverse conditions (if they will even be that!) first.
And really, these are young , very young men. Who is to say it's really about the learning, and not about conformity and sticking with their friends. The Torah is everywhere, and should be more than personal. Is there a more beautiful way to start off your married life than sacrificing for the klal? These 28 little girls are, like you, the future of klal yisrael. They should be respected as such. Their needs, their education, their "geshmak" for learning, especially in the foundational stage is as important, if not more important.
Teaching is not a job. It's much more than that. It comes with a responsibility. That responsibility extends to the young men, who saw something in the girls who chose to become teachers.
They should respect that commitment.
4 comments:
it is a job. and jobs are commitments.
Certainly that doesn't mean one can never leave a job. As a job with a fixed end time, one who takes the job should stay. I agree with that, but the idea that it is JUST a job when kids are effected is repugnant to me.
I think that one of the main ways to tell a person's sincerity in torah is his flexibility when it comes to it. We are very lucky today that torah is so easily accessible and can be found in so many communities. When a person is a true ben torah he can bring his torah values and find places of limud torah if he looks for them, and he doesn't necessarily have to go for the big name places.
At the end of the day, torah is torah.
This happened several times when my girls were young (about 10 years ago), and I realized that the engaged couples are often childlike themselves in their need to have everything they want right away.
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