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Because "Parents Are Concerned"

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In Mansfield, Texas, the school district won a grant to teach Arabic classes. Originally labeled as mandatory, the district has since backed down, dissembling that they are not, in fact, mandatory. Still, parent remain "concerned" that their children might be exposed to a language other than English. They fear that learning Arabic might somehow transform their children into Koran-reading Muslims; it's a marker of that fear that the district has made clear that teaching Arabic does not involve religious training.

The upset parents said that they should have been told months ago about the grant, to what end I'm not quite sure. Bigotry is on parade here, the irrational fear of the "Other."

America needs translators of Arabic, and also Mandarin Chinese, now more than it ever has, and such people are exactly what it does not have. If this country ceases to be great, it will be because of unfounded fears like this in Mansfield. We should not stop the important work of learning languages because a certain subset is afraid of languages other than English (the "speak English" or else mentality), religions other than Christianity, world views that are not their own.
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  1. AnonymousFebruary 9, 2011 at 5:52 AM

    One 'concerned parent's' comment was priceless, although this is not a direct quote it is very close: "They won't let us teach Christianity in schools, but they can teach Islam. I don't want my child being taught how to speak Islam."

    This reminds me of a coversation overheard by my daughter and myself between two waitresses at a restaurant in Butler, PA, which resulted in my daughter having a look of disbelief on her face. One waitress replying to the other: It's all right, now that Barack Obama is president we'll all be speaking Muslim before you know it."

    This is of course wrong on more than one level, with Barack Obama not being a Muslim in the first place, and second there is no language called Muslim, or Islam.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Herla cyningFebruary 9, 2011 at 6:59 PM

    [chuckle, chuckle] How silly, foolish, short-sighted. Need I go on? "Was I there?" ;-)

    ReplyDelete

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