Joe: “all things equal”- it rarely is, is it?
Look, there are already schools that say what you do and focus more on limudei kodesh. No contest. All I’m saying is that there is no obvious, constant correlation between time spent on limudei kodhesh and its quality.
And as far as funding goes- I’m from Monsey, where families are taxed through the roof to pay for a failing public school system. I know what you mean. But it’s the principle behind basically everything in life- he who pays the fiddler calls the tune. Right now we have a system where there is public school available to those who want it and private school for those who have other wants or needs. Taxation at this point finances the public schooling which everyone is entitled to and, in some cases, benefits for private schools as well (all my years of in-county school, I received public bussing and textbooks). Besides, a really big part of the issue here is the separation between church and state, which, regardless of what various frum columnists have written recently, is still pretty darn important, considering some of what I wrote above.
And Joe, a random question (if it’s prying, feel free not to answer)- you’re very articulate, and you’ve talked in other threads of being literacy teacher or something similar, I forget. Do you not want kids to have the same skills you do? Many are unable to achieve that because of their schools, and it’s not easy to teach such things to yourself. How did you achieve your level of articulacy? If it is in fact self taught, I salute you, but I wouldn’t guess that offhand.
Abba_S: “I don’t want the yeshivas to get additional aid, rather give the parents a tax deduction or maybe a tax credit for tuition paid to yeshivas for elementary & mesivtas.”
That’s a separate question, rather it’s related to Joe’s thing about taxes and the voucher issue in some states.
Yes, parents do choose their children’s schools, but as the OP pointed out, kids can end up messed up by their parents’ choices (and yes, that’s normal, but this seems something basic enough that it should be avoided), and as I mentioned upstream, there aren’t always options depending on the community. People wishing to remain part of their communities can’t always make the decisions they’d like to make. My siblings went to school with several children of chassidim who sent their kids to schools where they could get a better education and then felt alienated from their kehillos as a result. Working to change attitudes about limudei chol (because that’s also a big thing- the kids are taught not to care about them, and therefore even the tiny amount of time allocated for them can be wasted) from the inside out can stop people from facing this sort of a choice.