Religion & State
What Haredi schools teach
State-funded Haredi schools should still decide their own curriculum.
Many Haredi schools teach little mathematics or English. State funding is the lever in the argument.
What is at stake
The "core curriculum" is the minimum the Education Ministry requires: mathematics, English, science, Hebrew and civics. Most Haredi boys' schools teach little of it past primary age, concentrating on Talmud, and still receive partial state funding. How much depends on how much core they teach — a formula the Knesset can change.
The case for
- Parents decide how their children are raised, and in which tradition. Ministry officials do not.
- Haredi schooling continues a tradition rebuilt after European Jewry was destroyed. Talmud study trains a rigorous mind.
- Those who need vocational skills pick them up later in dedicated programmes. Funding conditions are a way of remaking a community through its schools.
The case against
- A boy who reaches eighteen without mathematics or English has had his choices made for him.
- The state paying the bill owes those pupils a basic education, and owes the economy a skilled workforce.
- The Bank of Israel warns that a generation without core subjects will weigh on growth for decades. Religious study can sit alongside them.
Both sides get the same number of points at comparable length. That is a rule of this site, not a coincidence.
What the next Knesset could decide
The Education Ministry sets funding rates by regulation, and bills have been tabled to guarantee full funding to schools that teach no core subjects at all. The next coalition agreement will fix which schools are paid what, and on what conditions.