Artchill: “I have always been against the wealthy parents bailing their kids out of trouble caused by misbehavior.”
The parents or the kids? The parents have the right if they so choose (any different than George W.?) as they pay for it, and the kids don’t know better.
And you are correct, that the English department is at best ignored, if not denegrated, by the Hebrew department, and that is also a cause of the lack of derech eretz.
And in many schools outside NY, nothing is mandatory. Wasn’t there something recently about Lakewood yeshivos that they will stop teaching english subjects after fifth or sixth grade?