BHA exposé: unregistered ‘faith’ schools enjoying charitable status despite operating illegally

[mr blur]

Last week, the BBC's Newsnight covered our investigation into North London's illegal unregistered Jewish schools, helping to bring greater public attention to the issue.

These schools are not harmless. They completely circumvent a child's right to education in favour of uninterrupted religious study which lasts from the crack of dawn until well into the night. An estimated 1,000 boys have disappeared from the state education system, trapped in a prison-like school environment where corporal punishment punctuates the school day and boys are beaten and bruised regularly. And when it's finally all over for these boys, and they leave school behind, they graduate unable to speak much or any English; unable to add or subtract; and completely ill-equipped to lead any kind of life that doesn't revolve around religion or the closed-off Charedi community which schooled them.

As with our investigations of conservative Christian and creationist schools, and our work exposing the takeover of Birmingham state schools by hardline Muslims – and indeed all or work education – we have been driven by our concern for the welfare and education of these young children. We are very grateful for the support of our members who feel as strongly as we do about the need for inclusive, integrated education

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https://humanism.org.uk/2016/03/31/bha-expose-unregistered-faith-schools-enjoying-charitable-status-despite-operating-illegally/

I worked, briefly, in this area in the 1980s and felt like I'd been taken back in time about 200 years. Ten and eleven-year-old boys walking round costumed like miniature old men with the ridiculous ringlets and the black hats and the funereal suits. And that doesn't make me anti-Semitic, it makes me anti-child abuse.

[progressoid]

1. I saw a gaggle of those boys in an airport a couple years ago.

One of the people I was with (a serious xian) saw them with their little hat boxes and goofy clothes and said, "aw, isn't that cute?" Of course she intended her question to be rhetorical because who wouldn't think that was cute, right? She was a little taken aback when I blurted out, "NO" to her in disgust. Since we were about to board a rather long flight, she wisely decided to drop the subject.

[mountain grammy]

2. I remember spending time with my aunt and uncle who

lived In Brooklyn. Many Hasidic Jews in the neighborhood. My family was Orthodox, but my uncle always thought the Hasids were abusive and extreme.

[Brainstormy]

3. Effin nuts! n/t