Here is a question for you. You are hired for a new job and you are given the company manual to read, or the computer software to learn. You are told that you should learn this in your free time. You are not being paid for this. Is this fair? Should you be paid for being trained or should you be expected to learn the “trade” before being hired?
On the one hand, if the company wants you to learn something new, they should teach it to you on their time. On the other hand, that is why they ask for a resume in advance: To make sure that new hires have the skills that are necessary to join the company. They did not pay for you to go to college, get a degree, or learn all the skills up to this point in life, so why should they pay you to learn the last few? I might be trivializing the issue because I think we can all agree that when it comes to work, a company has no obligation to hire anyone if they don’t think that they are a match, and a person doesn’t have to take a job if they don’t think that they are being compensated properly. Similarly, the question applies to education. We can’t expect our children to be responsible adults when they are children, but if we don’t educate them while they are children, how do we expect them to know how to behave as adults, when they reach the age of maturity? So the question becomes, to what degree are we obligated to educate them? In other words, is it a “biblical” obligation or is it “common sense” obligation? To further explain the question, I ask: Do we teach children how to behave just so that they will know how to behave when they are older and responsible? Or do we educate them when they are youngsters so that even while they are young, they can behave a certain way—even though we also understand that we can’t hold them accountable since they are young and immature, and they will make mistakes. I will take the question even further. When it comes to the practice of Mitzvot, whether children or adults who are taking on a new Mitzvah: During the “educational” process, are we just learning so that one day we will be ready to “do it right?” Or is the learning itself also considered practicing, even if it’s full of errors? As an aside, when it comes to a child, there is no obligation until their Bar/Bat Mitzvah, so the question is stronger. The answer is that even during the learning and practicing process, there is value. We might not be perfect, but Judaism is not “all or nothing.” Every little step that one takes, even just a baby step, counts. The main thing for us to do is to take that step. The focus should not be, “Are we getting rewarded for it?” because then clearly we are telling the “boss” we are not interested in the Mitzvah. Part of showing G-d that we are interested in Him is when we try to learn. When we are not focusing on success or failure, but on our effort, that is the main thing.
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