Brooklyn Arabic School

Backers of the proposed Khalil Gibran International Academy are insisting that their plan for a middle school that would teach Arabic is still alive, even though the department of education has decided against situating the school at PS 282 in Park Slope. Others suggest it's a fine moment to put the plan to rest for good. Our own view is that it's a good moment to review yet again the whole idea of parental choice in schooling. If there is a logic to the Khalil Gibran school, there's a logic to a lot of other things, too.

We have no apologies for the skepticism and passion with which some of our columnists have reacted to the school. Its principal, Dhabah "Debbie" Almontaser, accepted an award in 2005 from the Council on American-Islamic Relations. When Mayor Bloomberg in 2002 named a CAIR official to the city's human relations commission, it set off a firestorm of complaints. CAIR had cosponsored an event at Brooklyn College where attendees chanted "no to the Jews, descendants of the apes," and the organization posted a letter on its Web site suggesting that Muslims could not have been responsible for the attacks of September 11, 2001.

CAIR is a highly divisive institution in this city and country. It is funded in part by the same Saudi prince, Alwaleed bin Talal, whose $10 million donation Mayor Giuliani rejected after the terrorist attacks of September 11, when the prince called for America to rethink its support for Israel. When one of our reporters asked Ms. Almontaser whether she considers Hamas and Hezbollah to be terrorist organizations and who she thinks was behind the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, she declined to answer, suggesting she shouldn't be singled out for such questions.

Yet if Ms. Almontaser cannot bring herself to address such questions from a newspaper, how is she going to do it in school? We do not believe such skepticism makes one intolerant, or, as some have insinuated, an anti-Arab or anti-Muslim bigot. Arabic Islamist terrorism in Brooklyn is a genuine threat. This is a city that saw Ari Halberstam shot to death on the Brooklyn Bridge after his assailant, Rashid Baz, listened to a sermon at the Islamic Society of Bay Ridge. And more recently saw a clerk at an Islamic bookstore in Bay Ridge, Shahawar Matin Siraj, convicted of a plot to blow up the Herald Square subway station.

Not long ago, a man from Yemen who owned an ice cream shop in Brooklyn was convicted of sending nearly $22 million abroad for use by a sheik with ties to Hamas and Al Qaeda. The "landmarks plot" to blow up the United Nations and the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels was hatched on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn by Omar Abdel-Rahman and others. A civil rights lawyer and her interpreter were convicted of aiding Abdel-Rahman by transmitting messages from him to a terrorist organization in Egypt. This is not a time when concern over these issues can be dismissed as bigotry.

The majority of Arab Americans and American Muslims are law-abiding, patriotic, and peace-loving. Ms. Almontaser herself has won many admirers, including some New York Jewish leaders. "She's been a driving force in allowing trusting and really deep dialogues with not only the Jewish community but" with other communities around the city, the Jewish Community Relations Council's director for intergroup relations, Robert Kaplan, said. The New York regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, Joel Levy, has said, "I have a lot of confidence in her and am optimistic she's going to create an appropriate school."

The city's schools chancellor, Joel Klein, starts out with credibility on the issue of Israel and the war on terrorism. He unceremoniously shut down a program in which Columbia's Rashid Khalidi, a professor known for making sloppy accusations against Israel's American backers, was training New York City school teachers. More broadly, he is a partisan of the Americanizing role of universal public education. It's hard to peg either him or Mayor Bloomberg as a Balkanizer. At the same time, growing politicization within the city's public schools — such as Beacon — is an alarming trend they will need to start addressing somewhere.

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How to sort all this out? Our own preference is for a system of maximizing parental choice through school vouchers. These columns have long advocated vouchers that would allow students to study in a Catholic school or a yeshiva or an Arab school. It is a step that the mayor, the chancellor, the unions, and the liberal intelligentsia in New York have resisted. A taxpayer-funded Arabic school would only underscore the injustice of allowing one group of parents to educate their own children in a school that elevates their language, civilization, and religion at taxpayer expense, while depriving other parents of the same choices. Our test for whether all of the parties to this controversy are standing on principle will be their position on vouchers.

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Australia: A missing option -- school for boys



VICTORIA needs more boys-only government schools to improve boys' academic performance, an education expert says. Instead of having to pay expensive private school fees for a single-sex education, parents should have the option of sending their sons to boys-only state schools just as they can send their daughters to girls-only state schools, according to Ian Lillico, an international consultant on gender and boys' education. "It is a shame that we haven't said: 'Let's give some alternatives to boys'. If you are saying you want to choose single sex, and there are good reasons to do that, then they (parents) have to pay for private education - it doesn't make sense at all," Mr Lillico said. There are eight all-girls state schools in Victoria but only one all-boys alternative, the select-entry Melbourne High, which offers only years 9 to 12.

In New South Wales, where Mr Lillico is an adviser to the Education Department on gender and boys' education, there are 22 all-boys government schools and just five of those are select-entry schools.

Some co-ed Victorian schools that are near girls-only government alternatives have a gender imbalance in their student make-up. For example, Camberwell High has 800 boys enrolled and just 400 girls. Principal Elida Brereton said the school ran up to three all-boys classes in years 7 to 10 to keep some classes co-educational. "We sometimes have parents who complain to us that their boys are not getting a co-education, but have enrolled their daughters at (nearby single-sex school) Canterbury Girls. "You can't help but think, if they sent their girls here, the situation might be different," Ms Brereton said.

Research showed that not all boys thrived in a single-sex school, Mr Lillico said, but those who played team sports did. He said that single-sex education for boys and girls was most beneficial in the middle high school years. "If a boy doesn't play team sports, then going to an all-boys school could be a disaster for him. There is still that underlying thing where he might be thought to be a bit of a 'sis' or 'a wuss' or a 'gay'," Mr Lillico said.

Gentle, bookish and musical boys fared better in coeducational schools, he said. But if boys played a team sport and had an interest in a musical instrument or drama, they often fared well in all-boys schools.

But not all experts agree on the need for more boys-only schools. Ken Rowe, a specialist in gender and education at the Australian Council for Educational Research, dismissed the need for single-sex education. "It has truly got nothing to do with the gender of the kid or the gender of the teacher but it has got to do with the quality of the teaching," Dr Rowe said. He said girls did better than boys educationally the world over, but much of the success of single-sex schools came down to the enthusiasm of parents and school communities for creating boys-only or girls-only schools. "I think it may be in the minds of parents as an issue, but it is not an issue," he said.

A spokesman for Education Minister John Lenders said the Department of Education would monitor demand for single-sex education. "There has been a continuing decline in demand for boys-only schooling options in Victoria in recent years and there is no overwhelming evidence to suggest a change. This trend has not been mirrored in levels of demand for girls-only schools," he said.

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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