Posted on 04/24/2007 8:10:52 AM PDT by presidio9
Come September, an Arabic-language public secondary school is slated to open its doors in Brooklyn. The New York City Department of Education says the Khalil Gibran International Academy, serving grades six through 12, will boast a "multicultural curriculum and intensive Arabic language instruction."
This appears to be a marvelous idea, for New York and the country need native-born Arabic speakers. They have a role in the military, diplomacy, intelligence, the courts, the press, the academy, and many other institutions — and teaching languages to the young is the ideal route to polyglotism. As someone who spent years learning Arabic, I am enthusiastic in principle about the idea of this school, one of the first of its kind in America.
In practice, however, I strongly oppose the KGIA and predict that its establishment will generate serious problems. I say this because Arabic-language instruction is inevitably laden with pan-Arabist and Islamist baggage. Some examples:
Franck Salameh taught Arabic at the most prestigious American language school, Middlebury College in Vermont. In a column for the Middle East Quarterly, he wrote: "even as students leave Middlebury with better Arabic, they also leave indoctrinated with a tendentious Arab nationalist reading of Middle Eastern history. Permeating lectures and carefully-designed grammatical drills, Middlebury instructors push the idea that Arab identity trumps local identities and that respect for minority ethnic and sectarian communities betrays Arabism."
For an example of such grammatical drills, see the just-published book of Arabic instruction by Shukri Abed, "Focus on Contemporary Arabic: Conversations with Native Speakers" (Yale University Press), one chapter of which is titled "The Question of Palestine." The work's intensely politicized readings would be unimaginable in a book of French or Spanish conversations.
The Islamist dimension worries me as well. An organization that lobbies for
(Excerpt) Read more at nysun.com ...
“Westchester madrassa, you’re bringing me down.”
Apologies to Alan Sherman.
The enemy are among us. Heck, we may even elect one of them as President! Can you imagine how the islamofascists must be laughing at Barack Hussein Obama-mania? We need to deport them all!
What an insult to the name of Khalil Gibran!
Why don’t we do anything about these dangers?
I am so glad we don’t live in New York. I would be furious if I knew that my tax money was supporting something like this. Probably I’d need a whole new high blood pressure prescription. Are we THAT anxious to hand over our country to our enemies?
How nice: name it after Kahlil Gibran, a Christian Poet of some renown (I have 2 or 3 of his books). That’ll quiet any discord about what’s going on indoors.
Everyone should take advantage of the comments section at the site.
I agree with you! This is truly an insult to such a brilliant philosopher!
Khalil Gibran International Academy is a private school. Any tax breaks it receives are incidental. NYC would probably love to offer vouchers to the parents of KGI’s students, but since that would require offering vouchers to Catholic parents, it will never happen.
OK, I sent them a comment from “Lady Liberty”.
Teaching them to hate America in a foreign language. If they want to attend a madrassa, they (and their parents) can return to their ancestral hell holes and attend a madrassa there. They screwed up their countries so badly that they had to leave, and now they’re here screwing up ours. The government officials or school board that is allowing this should be removed from office.
The article says it is a public school.
The article implies that this is a NY Public school, thus funded by taxes. I didn't click on the link, so let me know if it actually states that it is private, not public as the quote above says.
It is a public school.
That’s great! More of us need to start speaking out in a greater number of public forums.
You are correct, they are all laughing at the United States.
BTW, who is (was) Khalil Gibran, the person for whom the academy is being named?
More specifically, the foolish mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, a Republican of convenience, a Dummycrat at heart.
Khalil Gibran was a Lebanese/American poet
Wow. Is this for real?
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