Hiding the Smartphone: The Cost of Mixed Messages Between Home and School

A Hebrew-language opinion piece argues that many parents in religious communities live in two realities at once, one that accepts modern technology and one that hides it from their children. The author says parents often conceal their smartphones before meeting school principals or ask children not to reveal family behavior, creating a false image of the home and school life. That, he warns, teaches children that a gap between reality and public presentation is normal.

The article says the damage begins when institutions present the family’s way of life as illegitimate. In that case, children are forced to choose between home and school, and either choice can create alienation. If they side with the school, they may lose respect for their parents; if they side with the parents, they may dismiss what they learned in school as unreal or irrelevant.

The writer also criticizes schools that claim technology simply does not exist among their students. He recounts asking a respected yeshiva head about phones, hearing that there were none and that students had no inclination toward them, then checking with several boys and finding that many had non-kosher phones, some even inside the yeshiva. He says the boys are not bad, but are growing up in a world where technology is everywhere, and they need open discussion and practical tools rather than denial.

He adds that when schools build their identity on the idea that a problem is absent, teachers lose the ability to address it honestly, and parents feel unable to ask questions. The result, he says, is a shared culture of splitting, falsehood and living between two versions of reality. The author closes by warning about growing extremism among some young people in the ultra-Orthodox public, saying parents must ask whether they truly stand by their own path. A child who sees a parent at peace with that path, he concludes, receives a model of truth, and without truth, education cannot last.