Now about the t-shirt my understanding is that it was not on a “student”, how could it be when the school wasn’t even open. Debbie Almontaser belongs to a Yemeni group who shares space with a organization that sells these t-shirts. Does that make it better or worse than if it was a student, I’m not sure, but it’s hard to have the discussion when both sides have bad info.
As to her qualifications, she has little to none as an administator and does not have the backing of the United Federation of Teachers (NY teachers union) who have been critical of her. The idea that just the anti-Arabic bigots were what got her replaced is nuts. Ny politics are much more complex than that. Having the teachers union against you is a bad thing in NY. Of course with even a little experience in or as administration Debbie might have known to keep her mouth shut and refer press to the school board like any experienced person would have done.

As to enrollment, there are only 44 students enrolled. Only 6 have any previous arabic skills. It leads me to wonder what 6th grader will have any interest in this? This is not meant to be a school for Arabic students so who would be that interested? Lets face it Arabic will not be the language of business or arts so what, we have 6th graders that want to be future interrorgators? Is it really about the tiny little school or politics on both sides.

This reminds me of the frenzy with which children who had contracted AIDS through blood transfusions were hounded out of scholl. Fellow citizens lined up to shout ‘killer’ at these poor children.
Ignorance breeds fear and hatred, and we never learn.,

Language immersion schools aren’t uncommon. There is nothing inherently wrong with them and they are quite effective. In Kansas City there is a French immersion school, a Spanish immersion school, a school that does Spanish immersion K-8 and offers French immersion grades 6-8 and a French immersion charter school.

The amount of utterly ignorant balderdash being posted on this subject is staggering.

It would be too easy for such a school to become a training ground for islamic activist to learn and network instead of being for Americans to learn useful schools. The first principal’s backgrond of islamic activitism should have been a huge red flag for everyone to take a much closer look.

Also, the same rules that apply to every other school should apply to it. The Koran should be used for reading assignments and religion should be discussed in a historic context.

Somebody’s question does bring up the point that it isn’t just Arabic that is important to our national interest or the world culture. Farsi (Iran) should also be studied more heavily, as well as Pashtun and Urdu (Afghanistan and Pakistan). Of course, each of those countries has many different first languages inside them, but you have to start somewhere.

Perhaps we should close down the Center for Irish Cultural Studies in Connecticut? They’ve even got an exchange student program to send them to Ireland! OMG, bet they learn from the IRA how to make bombs and stuff. Or maybe I’m behaving like a jerk and giving into stereotypes.

For the record I think an Intifada NYC tshirt is out of line and the person wearing it deserves to be yelled at. Expecting non-arabic speakers to know about the traditional meaning and wanting them to respond accordingly is asking a bit much. Especially in New York. Cultural sensitivity is a two way street.

Which language are we gonna teach because there are dozens if not a 100 different groups, subgroups and dialects of the arabic language.

The reason it needs its own school is that immersion programs do their job better than just taking a single class at a regular high school (I speak as a confirmed failed high school Spanish student). If we want the best results, a school dedicated to the purpose will do its job better than one that is not so dedicated (we see the same thing in Spanish immersion programs in the DC suburbs, which are wildly popular with parents of all backgrounds because they do a great job teaching students a really important life skill that I–even at one of the top public high schools in the country–proved unable to master).

Quoting from your article at your own blog.

Lets forget for a moment that this woman was surely a good person and a good educator. I have seen many a good educator end up selling cigarettes at the local 711 for political reasons.

Explain to me WHY we need a SCHOOL for this? Why is a program at many public education schools not sufficient to accomplish the goals you push.

National security for example.

Why must we isolate these students into their own school when in fact we can immerse many thousands more into the culture and language of the Muslim world then one single school could ever hope to accomplish.

If the goal is truly national security then we need more then one school with a few hundred students.

First up, the person in charge of the school wasn’t wearing the t-shirt. Her great flaw apparenty was not to reflexively condemn her student’s t-shirt enough.

Next up, have you actually looked at the demographics of the school to see who is attending?

Third, you basically just stated that the school is okay if white kids go, and it’s bad if they don’t. Whoa. What if American kids go or do only white kids count towards justifying the school’s existence?

Fourth, which afro-centric schools are you referring to that exclude whites? I don’t know of any public secondary schools that do, and, if you are referring to historically black universities, some private and some public, most of them I know all have programs in place specifically to recruit white students.

Finally, you conclude that this is supported because it is bad for the middle class. Learning Arabic. I’m not sure how, but since the primary bad thing you did argue for was that no white kids would be going, I have to assume you identify the middle class with being white.

b) She’s very highly respected in the Jewish community–most of whom (me included) has risen to her defense against this baseless attack, as well as the American community (of which Jews and Muslims are a part of, remember?), and I don’t really care if she is pro-Muslim, so long as she’s pro-Muslim in a progressive and peaceful way (which she is, and is something we should encourage).

c) She was replaced with an Orthodox Jew as the new principal–is that enough to assuage your objections?

The arab immersion argument would have some credibility is the people running the school had credentials as arab scholars instead of credentials and anti-jewish, anti-American, pro-muslim activist. If the person in charge of the school is wearing such provacative t-shirts, I doubt there will be many blond haired, blue-eyes white kids learning about the Arab world.

This type of school fits into the same category as the afro-centric schools that exclude whites. I guess that explains why certain people are supporting it because they use the logic that if it is bad for middle class American it must be good.

I have no idea why I’m flipping out–normally my tolerance for inane statements is much higher than this.

Immersion programs are not the same as segregation. There is long, long evidence – both common sense and based on research – that immersion is critical to any true success with a second language. Pretty much everyone learns more French, Spanish, Chinese, or Arabic after 6 months in France, Spain, China, or Jordan than they do in 4 years of language classes in a school at home. In an immersion program, you are forced to continually use your language throughout the day to speak with others in a way that you just cannot get when the language and culture is only studied for an hour or two hours a day, and then the rest of the day has nothing to do with the topic. In regular classrooms, you learn patterns and vocabulary. In immersion programs, you learn how to actually use the language.

In other words, immersion programs have a documented language-learning purpose that is essentially impossible to get in any other way. This is certainly true of language learning (I’m an editor of a language learning journal by the way, so I’m not completely making this up), and it seems to be helpful to all sorts of other education as well, such as math schools and theatre schools. It just helps when all of your friends know calculus or Shakespeare, too.

I haven’t seen much work yet on Looney Tunes schools, but I’ll report back if I do.

Nothing at all. In fact I encourage it.

However there is something inheritantly wrong with seperating these students into their own schools.

We did this in the South. It was called segregation. Blacks learned all about their culture but at what expense?

They learned nothing about the White predominant culture and the Whites learned nothing of the Black Culture that was every bit as rich.

Segregation set back race relations decades. This is exactly the same thing. I don’t give a flying flip if they are teaching Islam, Hindu or Looney Toons. When you segregate you end up with segregated views.

This is a bad idea for PUBLIC EDUCATION. We are to teach our children diversity……not exclusivity.