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New York City's Arabic-language public school, the (Khalil Gibran International Academy), opens its doors this week, with (special security), for 11- and 12-year-old students. One hopes that the prolonged public debate over the school's Islamist proclivities will prompt it not to promote any political or religious agendas.Count me as skeptical, however, and for two main reasons. First is the school's genesis and personnel, about which others and (I have written extensively)...(one of many articles). Second, and my topic here, is the worrisome record of taxpayer-funded Arabic-language programs from sea to shining sea.The trend is clear: pre-collegiate Arabic-language instruction, even when...

Ann Arbor, Aug 28, 2007 / 09:13 am (CNA).- The New York City Department of Education approved a proposal to open a publicly funded Muslim school. The decision, however, is not going by unchallenged.The Thomas More Law Center announced yesterday that it will represent a group of citizens opposed to the Sept. 4 opening of Khalil Gibran International Academy (KGIA). The Law Center will act as co-counsel with attorney David Yerushalmi, who filed a Freedom of Information Act request on July 23, asking for more details about KGIA. Yerushalmi’s requests have gone unanswered to date.The Law Center claims the school...

Abraham Lincoln once famously observed, "The philosophy of the school room in one generation is the philosophy of government in the next." The truth of Lincoln's observation is, no doubt, at the core of the apprehensions that New Yorkers have expressed about the Khalil Gibran International Academy scheduled to open next month in Brooklyn. Adding to their apprehensions is the fact that KGIA is just three blocks from a mosque which has a history of employing radical imams and which was frequented by one of the terrorists implicated in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. It takes a lot to...

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...

And when John F. Kennedy memorably exhorted Americans: "Ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country," was he consciously quoting words written by Gibran and addressed to the people of Syria and Lebanon half a century earlier?   http://www.cs.umb.edu/jfklibrary/j012061.htm   http://www.4umi.com/gibran/   http://www.bartleby.com/73/766.html   http://www.alhewar.com/Gibran.html