Reply To: Time to demolish orthopraxy

Aaq, the hat thing is rare, and i mentioned it as the exception to the rule, to point out that I’m not selling yeshivishkeit to my students.

The example i gave about the kid covering his eyes is what i usually hear; that, and things like not saying lashon hora, checking hashgochos on foods, making brochos(do you know how many kids eat without making brochos?) Getting up to wash their hands if they touched their shoes…one kid gave his sister a bracha after blaming her for something that turned out not to be her fault….things kids even in the yeshiva world often don’t know about. And parents notice.

Every teacher stresses derech eretz, and I’ve found that it doesn’t work very well. Actually, it doesn’t work at all. Kids are kids, especially today, and are disrespectful, especially those exposed to television shows where the characters call their parents by their first names.

So instead of talking cliches that they’ve heard and ignored for years, i roll it into other lessons. And it’s not just with the MO kids; yeshiva kids hate the idea that yiddishkeit is all about cleaning the house, listening to mommy and totty, etc…

I engage them. I talk about what the Torah says about why we’re here, what we have to do to reach our goals, how beautiful learning is, how beautiful mitzvos are…and how we will miss out on those things if we violate the Torah, and I’ll give being chutzpadik to a parent as an example. You’d be surprised at what young people are capable of understanding.

But that’s one failure I’ve seen in the chinuch system, which includes MO and the yeshiva world(chasidim seem to be spared from this machlah) of conflating the preaching of derech eretz in practical matters with teaching the concept of derech eretz. When the concept is clear, it follows that the kid will clean up after himself, will listen to the parents, etc…but talking about it ad nauseam never works, and can make a kid’s view of yiddishkeit be juvenile for years to come.