Open School Days are upon the community, as parents taste and sample the offerings at the educational institutions that will take responsibility for their children. Baruch Hashem, Bergen County is blessed with many such fine institutions, and parents have plenty to choose from. Of course, each school has its own programming, with its own hashkafot, or philosophies of education, and ways of providing Jewish and secular education to its students. And when you entrust your children to these teachers from the time they are tykes to the time they become college graduates, you want to ask yourselves, how will my child turn out? There might be some other questions you may want to consider, too.
Will my child be passionate about Judaism? Will my child learn midot and be kind to others? Will my child learn critical thinking skills? Will my child have enough confidence in his or her Yiddishkeit to face the worlds of Torah U’Mada without succumbing to the lure of secularism?
The cost of your child’s education is enormous. The education you are shopping for and working so hard to pay for should be worth every penny. At the end of the day, you want your child to be a passionate, kind, caring Jew, who understands his/her history and role in the world, who is responsible and accountable for his/her actions, and who respects the pintele Yid in every Jew, and the divine spark in every human being–basically Torah with Derech Eretz.