This is a long-running scandal.

Gene Steinberg was born and raised barely an hour outside New York City, but well into adulthood he could barely speak the language of his native country.

Raised in a mostly Hasidic community 50 miles northwest of Manhattan, Steinberg, now 43, attended schools where Yiddish was the primary language of instruction. Until age 12, he received only an hour of instruction in secular subjects each day. After that, the number dropped to zero. From early morning until late in the evening, he spent his time immersed in the study of Jewish texts.

When he went to enroll at a community college at the age of 37, he was told he had to take an English class aimed at new immigrants.

“I had a conversation with the person in charge and the first question she asked me [was], ‘When did you immigrate? What year?’” Steinberg recalled. “And I tried to explain to her, I didn’t immigrate. I was born here.”

In Kiryas Joel, a village in Orange County, New York, where the majority of residents are Yiddish speakers affiliated with the Satmar Hasidic sect, he “learned almost nothing, even in basic English, basic math,” he said.