NYC To Open Arabic Public School

[Matt Molnar]

NY1 (http://www.ny1.com/ny1/content/index.jsp?stid=1&aid=66778):

City To Open Arabic Public School In Brooklyn
February 13, 2007

The Department of Education says that it will open a public school next fall dedicated to Arabic language and culture.

The Khalil Gibran International Academy is one of 40 new schools that will their debut in the city next September.

Education officials say although half the classes at the school will be taught in Arabic, they want to enroll a diverse student body.

The school is set to open in Brooklyn.

[Matt Molnar]

Good to see our tax dollars being spent on classes taught in foreign languages, when they can't even teach native English speakers how to read and write English.

Also, now every ethnic group in the city is going to demand a school in their language.

[emshighway]

Where is the Gaelic and Italian speaking schools going to be?

[RDU-JFK]

Where is the Gaelic and Italian speaking schools going to be?

Italian is taught in a handful of high schools (or it used to be), but I agree with your point.

[Mateo]

Children, regardless of neighbourhood of residence or ethnicity will have the opportunity to choose to be functionally bilingual in what's bound to be a very important language in the next few decades. Explain to me why this is a problem. It's not like children are going to be forced to learn Arabic, and it's not like resources are going to be diverted from teaching our precious, fragile, endangered English language. There's already a bilingual Mandarin-English public school in Chinatown that, I believe, is one of the top performing elementary schools in the NYC system.

[cancidas]

i took a regents exam in polish back in hs. they never had polish classes though. shame, would have been a very easy A.

[Tom_Turner]

Ah, the irony.......

<<Since he had had no formal schooling in Lebanon, school officials placed him>> [Gilbran] << in a special class for immigrants to learn English>>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalil_Gibran

Now in my opinion there is nothing wrong with an Arabic Public School in NYC per se....

though I think it is reasonable to believe there will be subversive politics in the mix before too long given the Board of Education's record, the ability of the city to breed racial/ethnic arsonists pandered to by the media and/or entirely electable to the City Council, a multiculturalism agenda that seeks and encourages the balkanization of America by promoting differences despite hiding behind the window dressing of "strength though diversity" ....etc...

Hopefully I am wrong about that though.... :)

Tom

[emshighway]

Where is the Gaelic and Italian speaking schools going to be?

Italian is taught in a handful of high schools (or it used to be), but I agree with your point.

Italian was taught but there wasn't an entire school devoted to it. Teach the language, allow clubs but why dedicate a whole school?

[T-Bird76]

Absolutely ridiculous! The U.K has schools like this and they are centers of hate as captured time and time again. As some mentioned offer the language, clubs, w/e but an entire school devoted just for Muslims is outrageous and uncalled for!

[hiss srq]

This is bull****. No one needs their own "special" schools. Jews, Catholics, Christians, etc etc etc If you want a school fund it with your own money. We have a hard enough time teaching kids these days when with an average budget of nearly twenty grand per year per student we are ranked number 23 if I recall correctly while Singapore alloting 850 a year per kid is ranking number one in maths and sciences. Lets keep the money regular public schools. Add programs within regular schools if you want but my aunt it a teacher for BOCES and they get the least funding of them all while they are the ones who could use it the moast in supplies, and better pay for the teachers as they have a much more challenging job than any public school teacher.

[NcSchu]

Does this even represent a large minority of New Yorkers? I could care less what NYC does with its money, but I never thought of that area as being a really arabic place.

[Matt Molnar]

There are large Muslim populations in the city, but I'd say very few of them are from Arabic speaking countries. The most are probably from Pakistan and Bangladesh.

[Mateo]

The main Arabic-speaking areas are in Boerum Hill and Bay Ridge in Brooklyn. I think a lot of the opposition here is confusing "Arabic" with "Muslim." Not all Muslims speak Arabic, and not all Arabs are Muslims. Yes, most Arabs are Muslims, but this is a statement that's no more valid than noting that not all Catholics speak Portuguese, but most people who speak Portuguese are Catholic. This school won't be teaching Islam, it'll be teaching Arabic. Indeed, as a public school functioning in a legal environment that includes the Establishment Clause of the Constitution, I would imagine that great care would be taken to avoid any action or perception that the school would be favouring Islam over any other religion.

[hiss srq]

No confusion here. I know the diffrence. Moms side of the family is Muslum.

[Mellyrose]

No confusion here. I know the diffrence. Moms side of the family is Muslum.

Is that something like Muslim?

[hiss srq]

same diffrence so what I bite at spelling. You get the picture

[Mateo]

No confusion here. I know the diffrence. Moms side of the family is Muslum.

I pointed out the difference because the examples that you used for "special schools" were Jews, Catholics, and Christians, all of which are religious groups, and thus would violate the Establishment Clause if a public school was set up in their benefit. Arabic is not a religious group; in this case it's simply a language of instruction, since the school will not be exclusively for native speakers of Arabic.

[hiss srq]

Ahhhh.... Personally though I just do not see why we can not place these programs within established schools and programs to deal with linguistic issues some children have. Just my $.02