"Gibran Academy aims to offer all its students, from sixth through 12th grade, a rigorous, well-rounded and completely secular education that broadens their horizons. It is the type of school that can strengthen and unify the city - not, as some allege, tear it apart," writes Debbie al Montaser.
The title of the post is how she concludes her article: a quote from Gibran Khalil Gibran--a fitting motto for such a school and a reminder that there are better reasons to study Arabic than that it's "the language of the enemy."
6 comments:
I agree that there are reasons to learn Arabic, or any language/culture, other than for the purpose of "knowing about the enemy." However, the reason why this [public, might I add] school is even being considered is due to the current political situation; in the eyes of many, our primary targets are "Arabs" and we must understand "The Arabs" to conquer them [or win over their hearts and minds, to put it euphemistically] If we were fighting North Koreans, we'd have a Korean school. There's no reason a school district would use tax money to build a special school to teach about a specific culture just for the hell of it.
Or maybe I'm wrong...it's just my take of it.
arianne,
You are right to a large extent. But I don't think this is who the students are necessarily going to be. There's a public Chinese school in NYC I think. A friend of mine, who's Arab, had her daughter there.
Hmmm. I'm pretty sure bilingual public education is banned here in California.
really? They have what they call "immersion" schools in Virginia where they teach half the week in English and half in Spanish. They are public.
I believe pop 227 requires that all public schools in California must teach in English. It was passed because pre-existing bilingual schools were failing to adequately teach immigrant children English.
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