Reading, Writin' and 'Rithmatic - in Arabic

One of the 40 new schools the city is opening in the fall will be the first public school dedicated teaching the Arabic language and culture. The NY Times reports that half of the classes at the Khalil Gibran International Academy will eventually be taught in Arabic. It will be located in Brooklyn, though it's unclear where yet. Principal Debbie Almontaser says the school will start out with just sixth graders, but will eventually have 500-600 students. She said, "We are wholeheartedly looking to attract as many diverse students as possible, because we really want to give them the opportunity to expand their horizons and be global citizens."

New Visions for Public Schools is the school's partner, and the Arab-American Family Support Center is providing the Arabic language instruction. There are other schools that offer non-English instruction, for instance, the High School for Dual Language & Asian Studies, where students are "expected to comprehend, speak, read and write in English and Chinese by the time they graduate."

In other school news, parents are sounding off to the City Council about the Department of Education's bus route changes. We wonder if any parents tried to physically harm Schools Chancellor Klein, who was in attendance.

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By Jen Chung in News on February 13, 2007 4:36 PM

Comments [rss]

whatever

#[5] Not necessarily. Bay Ridge also has a high percentage of Arabs, so it's possible that it could be a contender for such a school.

Sorry, but I agree that the first priority of the Board of Education should be to ensure that students achieve proficiency in the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic. Too many schools in the NYC system underperform vis-a-vis state guidelines.

anonymass

I have to believe this school will be close to Atlantic Avenue which is sort of an Arabic culture corridor.

Dave H.

No enrichment before every school reaches a low-level common denominator seems like a perfect way for the majority of public school kids to get the crappiest education possible. The rare occassion when different groups join together to present unique and better-than-average opportunities for school kids should be applauded I would think. I have a young relative who attends a primary school mostly serving a less well off demographic of immigrants and ethnic minorities. An entrepreneurial curriculum and strong involvement by parents, however, has his classmates outperforming almost all of their city's peers while gaining fluency in a second language.

Ankle-chaining individual schools to the mediocrity of the system as a whole is the best way to ensure that all students are shortchanged and robbed of opportunities equally. That's a small-d democratic approach, but d also stands for disastrous.

anonymous

Sorry but I'm totally not in favor of this - not until we can guarantee all public school kids a solid basic education in reading, writing, and arithmatic with more than one gym period per week and a class size of less than 35 kids to one teacher. Please people! Where are our priorities?

matilda

Sorry, but I'm totally not in favor of this. Not when I can't find a public school to educate my son in the basics (reading writing arithmatic etc.) where the class size is below 35 kids with one teacher. And we live in a relatively upscale area! Our public school funds should be going towards giving our kids a good basic education with more than one gym session a week and a smaller class size. Once we get that down pat, then we can concentrate on other things.

Dave H.

What an excellent idea. Gibran is an archetype of the immigrant who finds his artistic voice in the cosmopolitan milieu of America and enriches its culture significantly, while maintaining emotional ties to his home country (Lebanon, where he requested to be and is buried.) The only thing going against him is the fact that he settled in Boston (who knew? Irish and Lebanese Catholics).