Arabic school in N.Y.C. creates stir
Critics say the academy may breed extremism. Supporters see a vital role for it in the post-9/11 world.
By Alexandra Marks | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitorfrom the June 1, 2007 edition
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New York - In September, New York City will open the nation's first public school dedicated to teaching Arabic and Arab culture.
Named after the Christian Arab poet Khalil Gibran, it's one of 65 specialty dual-language schools in New York. But it's the only one that has sparked a public controversy.
Some conservative critics have warned it could breed home-grown extremists: "A Madrassa Grows in Brooklyn," read one provocative headline in The New York Sun. Others have attacked it for balkanizing public education, which has historically played a primary role in helping the nation's many immigrants assimilate.
Supporters deny both claims and say the academy is designed to educate world citizens and bridge Eastern and Western cultures, something sorely needed in today's increasingly global world.
Underlying the controversy, experts say, is a larger question of how the nation and its schools cope with the influx of Arab and Muslim immigrants during a time when the threat of Islamic terrorism sows distrust. It's also a period in which ignorance about Arab culture and Islamic teaching runs high.
At the same time, however, US intelligence and law-enforcement agencies desperately need qualified Arab speakers to navigate the changed world.
"As a country, we still have a certain degree of fear in the aftermath of 9/11, and to a very great degree it exists because there are so many misconceptions still about what it means to be an Arab and what it means to be a Muslim," says Nial Ibrahim, executive director of the Arab American Institute, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington. "Arabs and Arab-Americans ultimately look for the same things for their children [as any American]: a chance to get a meaningful education, an ability to improve on what their parents accomplished, and the opportunity to live in peace with their neighbors."
When the New York Department of Education announced in mid-February that one of the new schools slated to open in September would be the Khalil Gibran International Academy, there was little fanfare. But within weeks, some parents at the school that was to share a location with the new academy objected, saying it would create overcrowding. Then conservative columnists at The New York Sun began warning that the new school could breed extremism.
Daniel Pipes, a controversial Middle East scholar, wrote that "Arabic-language instruction is inevitably laden with pan-Arabist and Islamist baggage." He pointed to a column in the Middle East Quarterly about Middlebury College's prestigious language schools. It contended that the Arab language curriculum there "indoctrinated [students] with a tendentious Arab nationalist reading of Middle Eastern history."
The dean of Middlebury's language schools, Michael Geisler, strongly denies the assertion and says that much in the article Mr. Pipes quoted was "demonstrably wrong." Still, the charge raised concerns among some in New York's influential Jewish community.
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