Much has been written, and will undoubtedly continue to be written, about the current spiritual state of our teenagers. We hear about teens keeping "half-Shabbos" or being far less careful with issues of negiah, we talk about schools having to spend more time and money on programming so as to better provide for the spiritual education of our students, and we see our students sometimes drifting off of the path and sometimes seeking out new avenues to spirituality (witness the rise of neo-chassidism). Each school, shul, and community has to be aware of what its teenagers are going through and plan accordingly.
What is interesting to me is that our students are unique in one way from the generations of students that preceded them. Without having the numbers in hand, I am going to assume that a higher percentage of our students (as compared with 20 or perhaps even 10 years ago), are children of at least one parent, and often two parents, who studied for a year or more in Yeshiva in Israel. One would expect, or at least hope, that someone who not only had a full day school and high school education in America, but also the supposedly life-altering education and experience in Israel, would be equipped to provide their children with the softer religious skills and inspiration that schools seem to be tasked with doing in loco parentis. Do we blame post-modernism? Smartphones? Some other trendy bogeyman? I am intrigued to hear the thoughts of the members of this forum.
Aaron Ross
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/12/2018 02:06PM by mlb.
