To the Editor:

. . . David Singer’s article (“The Growth of the Day-School Movement,” August] . . . is especially noteworthy for its recognition that the day schools constitute a “movement,” and Mr. Singer is to be commended for calling attention to the growing role of these schools in American life in general and American-Jewish life in particular. . . . But the article does not contain any discussion, or even a listing, of the various communal forces involved in the development of the day-school movement. . . . Perhaps Mr. Singer knew that to begin giving credit would have meant compiling almost a complete Who’s Who in American-Jewish life. . . . Yet . . . everyone ever associated, no matter how remotely, with the day-school movement would agree on the vital role played in this effort by Torah Umesorah, the National Society for Hebrew Day Schools. Founded in 1945, it has functioned ever since as the only such communal effort devoted exclusively to the day school. A movement has to begin somewhere, and although there were day schools in existence before Torah Umesorah, it was the creation of this agency that marked the birth of the movement. . . .

Elkanah Schwartz
Brooklyn, New York

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To the Editor:

. . . I am involved in the operation, or more accurately, the creation of a small, nonaffiliated community school, of the type David Singer calls “interdenominational.” I think this school will be a harbinger of many more. . . . But there should also be more public discussion . . . about who really sends their children to day schools. . . . First, those who are religiously committed . . .: many children come from homes of Jews involved professionally in the Jewish community, and many others come from homes where one or another parent is himself the son or daughter of a rabbi, a cantor, a Jewish communal worker, or a lay leader in the Jewish community. . . . I have also been amazed at the number of children in our own school who come from homes where one or even both parents are converts to Judaism.

But what of the people who think about sending their children and then don’t? These . . . include families where one parent wants to send the child but will not argue for it against a spouse. In these cases one cannot help but wonder what role the social acceptability, or lack of it, of a particular day school plays in the parents’ decision.

I continue to be amazed when I hear parents tell me that they acknowledge the advantage of combining secular and religious instruction, acknowledge the quality of the secular program, understand the greater amount of free time the child will have, and then still say they don’t want their child involved. Often they add that they want their child to go to a school where he “meets all kinds of other children” and experiences the “real world.”

I wonder, though, how “real” the child’s experience is when he goes to the typical neighborhood school . . . which often excludes Catholic children, usually excludes black children, almost entirely excludes children from recent immigrant and other minority groups, and rarely includes any child except those from homes economically interchangeable with the child’s own home. . . .

Parents today who argue in favor of the “melting pot” experienced by their own parents, or even grandparents, are oblivious to the fact that those homes were Jewish . . . and the children went out to become Americans, while today the average home in America, Jewish or Gentile, is the same, and Jews are forced to send their children out of the house to become Jews. And where do they send them? To synagogue schools which . . . , by almost unanimous agreement, are institutions that have tragically failed in their real purpose.

Some people have said that it takes an unusual amount of self-confidence and a feeling of security about one’s own position and status to be a Jew in America who sends his children to a day school at the same time that he feels committed to life as an American and as a Jew. Perhaps there are very few of us who feel this secure, and possibly this in itself is a symptom of a far greater problem.

For my part, I do not know how secure I feel, but I do want my children to have the best chance for security available to them, and I feel that nothing will help them better than a solid background, knowledge, and understanding of their origin and history. . . .

Richard M. Fellman
(State Senator)
Omaha, Nebraska

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To the Editor:

David Singer’s “The Growth of the Day-School Movement” is quite remarkable for its broad insights. In dealing with the non-Hasidic two-thirds of the population, he might also have pinpointed one of the most pronounced problems of the day-school movement: how to create in students a specifically Jewish attitude, and instill in them a dedication to the Jewish community rather than produce only “Jewishly informed and formally observant” versions of the prevailing American middle-class education. . . . The Jewish day school deserves community support only if it inculcates a philosophy and an attitude of duty which would make it more than just another private school. . . .

Edith F. Bondi
Houston, Texas