cleverjewishpun “It’s similar to the problem in the 30’s and 40’s where men were losing their jobs every week and all they heard around the shabbous table was “It is so hard to be a Jew in America””
Absolutely — and R’ Moshe, tz”l is famous for saying that this complaining was big part of the reason that so many children of that generation left Yiddishkeit. But does that mean they should have worked on Shabbos? I always understood R’ Moshe’s point as we should be careful to present to our children the beauty and value of the sacrifices we are making happily for the sake of Torah.
The “tuition crisis” is not new. Hillel Hazaken had some trouble paying tuition, and almost lost his life as a result! There are numerous stories in Europe of extremely poor families who were moser nefesh to pay the melamed and ended up with sons who were great tzadikim. (Off hand I don’t remember the names, but I recall one story were the family sold the bricks of their fireplace, going without heat all winter so as to pay the melamed, and another where the mother gave up money she had been saving for years intending to buy herself a new dress.) The message that those kids got was that Torah learning is so important to us it is worth more than almost anything else in the world. Is that he message are children are hearing when we complain about tuition? I’m not saying we don’t need solutions — we most certainly do! But in the meantime, it is very possible for parents to communicate a different message rather than “I’m stressed out and broken down because of tuition”