Back in the 1960s, when I was getting my PhD, I had to meet a language requirement. I chose Russian, because at the time it was highly relevant. I'm not sure of it's relevance today, but it still comes in handy. Were I doing it today, I might well choose Arabic because today it's a lot more relevant than Russian.
You chose as opposed to being forced to learn Russian
This is not just a language course being offered, it was being required and it included the tradition, culture, art and etc of Muslims. It was complete indoctrination.
“I chose Russian”.
I think a lot of the controversy is over the fact that it would have been MANDATORY. No choice or selection. When you chose a second language, you were an adult. Children are more likely not to challenge any sort of viewpoint. The language course would have also included the culture/ field trips to mosques/ and other material (not just the language itself). I have no problem with it being offered in high school or colleges but children should learn their primary language/writing skills/punctuation/spelling first IMHO.
Excellent point in that while Arabic should hardly be REQUIRED language study for US public schools, maybe that fed money should go toward the armed forces developing their own lingual programs. My BIL (retired Navy Lt-Commander) works for CentCom as a civilian now doing job placement all over the Mideast Theater of Operations. Several years ago he lamented that very thing, having to use local Arabs/non-Americans to translate because one of the very hardest jobs to fill is liguistics in Arabic and Farsi - at the time the number of armed forces personnel trained or training in Farsi or Arabic was very small.
That might be a bit different a decade after 9/11, hopefully so.