Let me sharpen my question: what is the difference between education and training? Clearly it is not only a matter of boundaries. Is the sole purpose of the education system really just the inculcation of values? Where does productivity come into play? Values too can certainly be the result of training, that is: do A and do not do B (just like training).
P.S. Torah innovation within set boundaries falls under the definition of training; innovation without boundaries falls under the definition of education.

With God’s help, Shushan Purim 5780

The questioner nicely distinguished between “education” with stress on the first syllable, in which one aspires and the students are educated toward elevation, setting up as a value-based example those who excel in the realm of values and striving as much as possible to resemble them; and “education” with stress on the last syllable, in which the examples placed before the student are the successful people in making money and enjoying life, and not necessarily people of values.

How fortunate we are, how good is our portion, how pleasant our lot, and how beautiful our heritage, that our educational example comes from the holy Patriarchs, from Moses our rabbi and his disciples the prophets, and from the sages of Israel, the Tannaim and Amoraim, the medieval authorities and later authorities, in whose light we aspire to educate our children to be good toward Heaven and toward other people.

With Purim wishes for joy, Shatz

There really is a problem in Haredi education. But the alternative is suffering, religiously speaking, a colossal failure. Too bad the agenda of the middle path was murdered.

Moshe, which alternative do you mean?

A different kind of religious education.

Education complicates religion, and religious people complicate education — the solution: separate education from religion and religion from education, and that is enough said.

Benjamin, a side note — you have a recurring spelling mistake.
The term is “Haredi”; the yod comes at the end of the word, not in the middle.
The dalet follows the resh with no interruption.

With God’s help, Shushan Purim 5780

To “Simple and Clear” — greetings,

“Haredi” has added value when it becomes “Hareidi,” since as is well known, “two yods” are a divine name, for “two yods” symbolize the connection of two Jews to one another, a connection that brings about the indwelling of the Divine Presence between them, as the prophet said: “Then those who feared the Lord spoke one with another, and the Lord listened and heard, and a book of remembrance was written before Him for those who feared the Lord and for those who thought upon His name.”

The addition of “two yods” in its two senses — connecting the Torah to the One who gave it, and fellowship among companions — is what transforms education from mere “study,” which adds knowledge, into a “house dedication,” which turns a person’s soul into a sanctuary for his God. Therefore it is not enough to be merely “Haredi”; one must be “Hareidi,” with both cleaving to God and fellowship with others implanted in the soul.

As the author of the Tanya said, when two Jews gather together, the divine soul of both of them connects, whereas the ego-centered animal soul of each cannot connect, for Reuben’s self-centeredness contradicts Simeon’s self-centeredness.

And this is the special quality of the days of Purim, when drinking brings the distant close and repairs Haman’s claim that the Jewish people are “scattered and divided.” Therefore “Hareidi” is also “freedom of the hands” — the liberation that comes from joining “two hands,” leading to “the sanctuary, O Lord, which Your hands established.”

So, a toast to “two yods” — drink “to life,” “and may You hear from heaven.”
With the blessing of Shatz

Benjamin, I already answered that. All forms and types of education are attempts to innovate within boundaries. The differences are what the boundaries are and how broad they are. According to your definition, there is no education in the world at all.

“The only difference is how broad the boundaries are” — is the breadth of the boundaries not an essential characteristic (almost) just like the existence or absence of boundaries? The difference between a police state and a normal state is also only the breadth of the boundaries of what one can do or say without being imprisoned. Many negative adjectives differ from positive ones “only” quantitatively (ignoramus and learned; rigid and patient; violent and calm; lazy and diligent). In general it seems to me that a width of zero is also only a quantitative difference from any other width. And moreover, the difference between a qualitative difference and a quantitative difference is itself also a quantitative difference in the degree of distinction (and therefore in my opinion it is no less important). All this without joining any criticism of Haredi education; I am only wondering about the answer.

Joshua, you are right about all of that. I didn’t write otherwise. But Benjamin’s question rested on a simplistic assumption, and that is what I commented on. If he had disagreed about the breadth of the boundaries, there would be room for discussion. But he presented education as though it were something boundaryless that strives only for innovations of any kind whatsoever. My criticism of him was exactly your criticism here. It’s not serious. One can ask where the boundaries should be drawn and whether the Haredi boundaries are reasonable or not (and here too one should really be specific if one wants a serious discussion). But that was not the question.

Education without boundaries is not education at all. Every traditional education has boundaries, as it is said: “Do not move an ancient boundary that your fathers made.” But there is some point to the question with respect to thought, for thought has no boundaries. In practice, throughout history most institutions that educated for pure thought alone have failed, because instead of elevating thought to something above thought, they lowered thought to the limitations of their own understanding.

M80, which institutions, for example, “educated for pure thought alone,” and in what did they fail? The ancient boundaries made by the fathers were also instituted through thought, and the assumption is that if one becomes wiser and thinks more, one will be able to understand the justice of those boundaries. So of course if he thought, weighed things, and was not persuaded, then he will certainly move the boundary, and you have nothing but the head on your shoulders. Even the principle of not moving an ancient boundary is itself a product of thought and nothing more; one helped and the other fell. The phrase “above thought” blends for me with the phrase “below thought.”

The Torah says, “You shall not move your neighbor’s boundary, which the earlier ones set in your inheritance,” and Solomon learned from this that one should not move any boundary set by the earlier ones. The ancient boundaries instituted by the fathers stem from their fear of Heaven, their Torah, their good deeds, and their thought. Therefore the midrash says that a person is obligated to say: when will my deeds reach the deeds of my fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? For the later generations are the final stage of the thought of the fathers. Understand this.

Rabbi Michi, I am truly astonished by the Rabbi’s failure to distinguish between education and training. Setting boundaries is the product of training, and Haredi education, with all its boundaries, resembles totalitarian trends that degrade the human being insofar as they relate to him as possessing only partial and defective humanity — as a creature whose consciousness is limited and who is fit not for education but for training, not for rational justification but only for behavioral conditioning, not for autonomous thought but rather blind obedience, not for personal expression but only mechanical, robotic activity within closed and uniform systems.

I find this broad and vague discussion a bit difficult, but I’ll try. When you write, “throughout history most institutions that educated for pure thought alone have failed,” do you mean that the failure is that the graduates of those institutions (whoever they are — I do not know) did not arrive through their thinking at the thought-based conclusion that one should rely on the enactments of the fathers because those enactments stemmed from the fathers’ fear of Heaven, Torah, etc.? Obviously, if you measure the success of education for free thought by whether those educated will freely choose to march in a very rigid groove that seems to you self-evidently correct, then that education is nothing but an unnecessary risk. Free thought is not only a matter of value (a person who weighed things and chose what is right is preferable to one who is unaware of the alternatives), but also a tool for generating new thoughts that may expose flaws in the old thoughts.

With God’s help, Shushan Purim 5780

Every system of thought is built on foundational assumptions from which one proceeds and draws conclusions. And the academic world is far more rigid in this area, aside from the restrictions on discourse imposed by “political correctness.”

A creative solution to the problem of subordination to prior foundational assumptions was used by the Persians in the Achaemenid period (and it is mentioned in Dr. Tamar Eilam-Gindin’s book on the Scroll of Esther): every royal decision had to be examined in two states — both in a sober state and in a state of drunkenness, in which the framework of prior assumptions is broken through.

Best regards, Shatz

Joshua, freedom does not begin with thought, but with the choice of what the source of thought will be — that is, desire.

Benjamin,
I too, humble as I am, distinguish between education and training, but you are doing it with an overly sharp knife. This is not black and white but different shades of gray. There is no education that has no boundaries and no educational system that has no preservation goals at all, so according to your definition there is no education — only training. Moreover, there is no education that seeks only to preserve; the Haredim do not either. They educate toward producing novel Torah insights, for example. You can say that this is too little and not significant, but it is there.
Beyond that, they educate toward growth in character traits and fear of Heaven (according to their concepts). Is that worthless training? Is that not education? You could view it as personal development. Also, do you really think that everyone who goes through that education comes out in the exact same mold? There are different personalities there, with different approaches and different methods of study. To speak of Haredi education as though it were all one coin, as if there were no shades and it were mere training, is just simplistic.
That is why I wrote to you that this is a matter of dosage, not a conceptual or logical black-and-white argument as you presented it. As for your underlying claim that there is a problem in Haredi education, you do not need to ask me for agreement. My views are written in several places (especially in the letter to my son’s yeshiva). And I will add, as a side remark: simplistic criticism that presents the matter as black versus white, children of light versus children of darkness, even though at first glance it seems stronger, ultimately comes out much weaker. People understand that the black-and-white picture you present is not correct, and so they miss the real criticism that can be raised against Haredim and Haredi education. Just a bit of life advice. Your tendentiousness works against you, and therefore even criticisms that do have substance are not accepted when they come from you.

Benjamin’s solution is to separate religion from education. Have you tried imagining what the results would be?