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<p>Exactly. I, along with many others, have stated this. The use of “superstitions” in this context is offensive when following religious tenets has NOTHING to do with fearing something bad happening to you if you don’t do whatever it is, which is the common definition of “superstition.”</p>
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<p>OK, why then, was it wrong of this val’s school opting to accommodate her method of delivering the speech? They offered to do this (she didn’t ask). So, now you are saying that you will “oblige superstitious (ugh) people with what they want,” and so what is the issue then with the original news story because they also made accommodations for the val??</p>
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<p>It was a superstition and since the val is unable to come out of it having accomplished a so called great education that I started this thread.</p>
<p>“Is this education any worth?”</p>
<p>I think I get it…
He is willing to accommodate “superstitious” people for business reasons; he has no problem with people behaving in “superstitious” fashions but reserves the right to consider them “not educated.”</p>
<p>However, the school system, as an educational institution, should have managed to convince the student, over the course of time she was under their tutelage, that being an observant Jew was a ridiculous, superstitious practice, and if they didn’t accomplish that, they failed to educate her. So he’s disgusted with the school.</p>
<p>That is where he reveals a lack of understanding of our pluralistic society.</p>
<p>DeskPotato: The thread was suppose to discuss if such an education is any useful if we can’t bring the children out of superstitions.</p>
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<p>Yet last year a student at the OP’s daughter’s high school was one of ten winners of a nationwide essay contest on religious freedom. The high school touted the win–clearly, it was something that the high school valued. Does this mean that the OP’s daughter’s high school should also be held in contempt for failing to properly educate its students?</p>
<p>By the same measure, MIT students belong to campus religious organizations. By the OP’s logic, MIT should be regarded as having failed as an educational institution when its graduates are religiously observant.</p>
<p>Well, insofar as:
<p>it seems as if the conclusion is, yes, education is useful even if people retain their religious beliefs at the end.</p>
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<p>First, your thread title is: “What’s this education worth anything?” (this sentence doesn’t make sense) Honestly, “Is this education any worth?” also doesn’t read in a sensical fashion either. In any case, the goal of education in America is not to teach others to not follow their religious teachings, beliefs, customs, rituals, and traditions. Rather, it is to be accepting of the variety of religions that make up the melting pot in our country that espouses freedom of religion. The schools do not aim to educate others against their religious beliefs and traditions.</p>
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<p>Exactly! That is why I have mentioned “America” in this thread. Our country is a pluralistic society. I understand that POIH is an immigrant but get with the program! :D</p>
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<p>In our country, including at MIT, the educational institutions teach students to be accepting of beliefs of various religions and cultures and one belief system doesn’t rule over others’ beliefs. One is not more “normal” than the other.</p>
<p>*If I’m in the service selling business and most of clients are kosher loving then I’ll oblige them with kosher meat.
On the same note I’ll offer vegetarian food cooked in special utensil.</p>
<p>But I’ll still consider them “literate and not educated”.</p>
<p>It’s my liberal attitude that I’ll oblige superstitious people with what they want and that’s what “American Education” do. It bend rules to accomodate superstitious people.</p>
<p>Liberal tends to do that. *</p>
<p>Sorry, but that is not how a true liberal would think. To label someone as superstitious, uneducated, or illiterate simply based on a desire to practice his/her religion is not the least bit liberal in thought.</p>
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<p>So it’s a superstition if someone chooses MIT over UCB just because it is ranked higher on US News?</p>
<p>POIH…what “rule” was broken by allowing this lovely young lady to give her speech by tape recording?</p>
<p>I really doubt the school has any kind of formal rule that the speech must be given “in person”…it may be a tradition, but I doubt it’s some kind of rule (set up by the school board, etc).</p>
<p>That said.…what if the Val had enlisted and had to report for duty before graduation? Would you have objected if that student had recorded his speech so that it could be played during graduation?</p>
<p>The purpose of education is to teach students about secular things. They are not however intended to mold students’ thoughts and actions in regards to religion. Though I have learned about the big bang theory and evolution, it’s still my right to fast on Tisha B’av, declining to go to lunch or play basketball with friends because of the holiday, directly “interfering” with other people’s lives. If you go on google and type in superstitions on wikipedia you get “Superstition is a credulous belief or notion, not based on reason or knowledge.” But what you don’t understand is that the people of the Jewish faith don’t just blindly follow it without reason and knowledge, we take the time to learn who, what, when, where, why and how we are doing something. We study constantly, becoming more educated. I’ve actually learned so much about ancient cultures through my learning, it’s even helped me in my history classes. Your idea of religious beliefs and that they are superstitions is that people are blindly following ideas around them because if not they will go to hell or be smitten. But rather there are reasons behind everything and we must devote countless hours to learn this stuff. Going back to my example of Tisha B’av, we fast so we can mourn for the destruction of the 2 temples, very sacred places in our religion. She is doing these acts out of reason not blind following of a superstition.</p>
<p>Also people were blindly following that tradition of doing the valedictorian speech with a microphone without any thought about it. You are mad at her for breaking that tradition. Wouldn’t it be worse to break a tradition that has been around for thousands of years rather than one that is less than a hundred years old?</p>
<p>Since you are a big fan of wikipedia, POIH, lets look at their description of “separation of church and state”
So, since we understand that a public school would never directly interfere with a student’s religious beliefs, the inference seems to be that the school should somehow have done a better job of teaching critical thinking, to cause this student to question her religious beliefs on her own and to have made the reverse decision than she did-- i.e. to choose to reject her religious beliefs as illogical and to have given her speech directly into the microphone. I don’t agree, but I think thats where POIH is going.</p>
<p>BTW, the vast majority of the posters here agree with RobD’s definition in post #500, which is in line with the psychological use/meaning of “superstitious behavior”
It means that 2 independent, isolated events occurred close in time (temporally) and were somehow paired together as if they were causally related. Many years ago I ate raw broccoli and then ice cream, and a few hours later got an upset stomach. In my head I paired the broccoli (not of course the ice cream or the 2 eaten close in time 
) with the upset stomach and now rarely eat raw broccoli. THAT is superstitious behavior. </p>
<p>Now if some religious rituals had their foundations in these kinds of superstitous behaviors, it is reasonable to question them. But once they are incorporated into a religious theology, regardless of their origins, attacking someone’s religious rituals can be seen as disrespectful, especially if the rejecting of someone’s traditions is done in an offensive, abrasive way.</p>
<p>jym626 - Isn’t your example also known as ‘magical thinking’ to those who have not matured emotionally (such as young children?).</p>
<p>soozievt, thank you for this quote:</p>
<p>…here in America, there are many cultures, religions and traditions and one is not more normal than the next. </p>
<p>so sorry that this notion is lost on the OP.</p>
<p>yes teri, they are very close concepts. But magical thinking sort of has a component too that if you think something you can cause it to happen. Like our hoping that we will get through to POIH that calling someone’s religious traditions “superstitions” is an insult and having it acknowledged, I think that is magical thinking :)</p>
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<p>I wish I had a roommate like that.</p>
<p>The Bill of Rights in the US Constitution states:</p>
<p>“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”</p>
<p>The valedictorian’s school was upholding the Bill of Rights by not prohibiting the val’s free exercise of her religion. POIH, you are now an American citizen, I presume? Do you see that the school was following the letter of the law? That’s our system in American society. You have chosen to live here.</p>
<p>there is a teeny grain of truth in what the OP says, that only makes his stubborn and willful keeping to his stereotypes the more infuriating.</p>
<p>There ARE jews who have a definitely superstitious view to keep the mitzvot. I know because some of my relations are like that. They DO see a direct connection between specifics of observance and tangible results, in some cases quite short term causal results. In all instances they do NOT have a modern education - not only do they not have a secular education, they do not have a modern Orthodox education. </p>
<p>I am quite sure a good modern education, whether public, or the kind to be found in a Conservative or Modern Orthodox day school, WOULD cure them of that. </p>
<p>It need not of course cure them of desiring to observe the mitzvot, for OTHER reasons, as the examples of so many modern O and Conservative (and a few Reform) Jews shows (and I am sure there are parallel phenomena in other religious traditions)</p>
<p>I do not know for sure that the young lady in question is not superstitious in her outlook. That she intends to go to Stern, affiliated with the more or less Modern O Yeshiva University, leads me to think she is not. The distance between the hasidic superstitious outlook and the outlook of a place like Yeshiva U could be found in a work like “The Chosen” which OP has apparently never read (nor seen the film). </p>
<p>Good shabbos everybody.</p>