All students must learn in English
Here’s a New Year’s resolution that is within reach: let the Hasidic leaders who are denying educational opportunities to tens of thousands of students attending Hasidic schools in New York State stop blocking these children’s right, guaranteed by the state Constitution, to the opportunity for a sound basic education.
For more than a decade, leaders of the Hasidic community have been engaged in a protracted struggle to deny these children a meaningful opportunity to learn, in addition to their religious studies, basic English, social studies, civics, science and math that would allow them to earn a decent living and be prepared to be knowledgeable citizens.
In the fall of 2022, the state Board of Regents voted to implement new regulations to enforce the state Constitution and a century-old law that requires all private school students, religious or otherwise, to receive instruction in core subjects that is “substantially-equivalent” to that provided in local public schools. Last June, a city Department of Education report identified 18 Hasidic schools that fail to provide a modicum of education in English, science, math and social studies.
These two events were seen as important steps in the direction of improving education in Hasidic schools. However, just as New York was edging towards implementing standards to ensure that these children receive a proper basic education, supporters of the status quo dug up a new argument to aid their attempts to obfuscate and delay enforcement of the law: an allegation that the city and state Departments of Education were discriminating against Hasidic children on the basis of language.
Last month, Aaron Twerski, a professor at Brooklyn Law School, accused education officials of discriminating against Jewish students by insisting that instruction in core secular subjects take place in English and not in Hebrew. State education law §3204 is clear that English must be the primary language of instruction for core subjects in non-public schools.
Calling the state’s stance unconstitutional — even though it has been upheld by the courts — he pointed to bilingual public schools that provide dual language programs that deliver some instruction in a language other than English. Bolstering Twerski’s claim, Avi Schick, a lawyer representing some of these schools and Parents for Educational and Religious Liberty in Schools (PEARLS) accused the NYSED of a double-standard, allowing second-language instruction in public schools but not in private schools.
This is absurd. Public school dual language programs are targeted to high performing students who already have a strong base in English and to English language learners whose language facility will be developed more rapidly by being educated together with native English speakers.
State enforcement of the English language requirement is necessary in many of the Hasidic schools because tragically, too many students attending these schools know no English, and learn no English. The issue is not language of instruction; it is the utter failure of too many Hasidic schools to teach anything other than Judaic subjects during school days that sometimes extend to more than 10 hours.
Programs that fail to teach English and don’t offer study in math, science or American history cannot be compared to dual language programs teaching high performing students a foreign language in addition to English. Regarding the charge of “discrimination,” nowhere in local or state law are Jewish schools or any other schools denied the right to teach religious studies or to decide how religious studies should be taught.
Yeshivas are free to continue teaching Judaic studies in Hebrew, Yiddish, Aramaic or any language that they choose, just as the scores of dual-curriculum Jewish day schools throughout New York do every day. The issue is not language discrimination, but discrimination against Hasidic children by misguided adults who impose severe limitations on their intellectual horizons during their formative years.
The Hasidic leaders’ position is also an affront to democracy. They aim to perpetuate a system in which thousands of Hasidic citizens who know nothing about American history or about how our government works blindly follow their leaders’ dictates on who they should vote for.
For the sake of these students and for the integrity of our democratic institutions, we should all insist that in this new year the Hasidic schools and the Hasidic leaders follow the rule of law and allow these students to receive the sound basic education to which they are entitled under the Constitution and that the state law requires these schools to provide them.
Rebell, a professor at Teachers College, Columbia University, was co-counsel in CFE vs. State of New York, where the state Court of Appeals declared that all students in New York are entitled to the opportunity for a sound basic education under Article XI of the state Constitution.