May 14, 2007
NYC: Multi-Cultural and Tolerant, More Often Than Not
We've written a few pieces about the Khalil Gibran International Academy's attempt to find a physical home. The dual-language Arabic public school that has declared itself non-religious is, nonetheless, having trouble finding and sharing space with educational neighbors, who fear that they'll be hosting a terrorist academy. The fact that Khalil Gibran was an American-educated Christian poet seems to have drifted off into the ether of historical irrlevancy.
The Department of Education initially wanted to house the school in P.S. 282, but parents there complained that their children would be overcrowded and possibly endangered by older kids. The city responded by splitting the new Arabic-themed school between two existing schools on 4th Ave. Enter more concerns. From the Daily News:
Parents at the topnotch Math and Science Exploratory School in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, have called an "emergency PTA meeting" for Monday over plans to put the Khalil Gibran International Academy at its campus at 345 Dean St.We certainly sympathize with parents' complaints about space at P.S. 282. Parents there were echoing the same complaints of moms and dads who didn't want Ivy League intruders on the Upper West Side. Still, one of the widely-read parents, who has already expressed a certain gas-mask-ready paranoia regarding Arab terrorists, might not be the woman to make the best public case for putting the nix on an Arabic dual-language school, even while couching her concerns in feminist terms:"Our issue is not with the substance of the school. It's with the space," said PTA Vice President Thomas McMahon. "If those concerns could be met, we are willing to work to make the new school a success." That, again, would be a reasonable complaint, but it's been echoed very vocal mother from the school. "There's definitely a space issue," agreed Katia Lief, who has a seventh-grader at the well-regarded middle school. "This can cause overcrowding and chaos. If parents can be heard, maybe there can be some kind of result."
The school will be located in a neighborhood heavily populated by Arab Americans. Ms. Lief said she worried that the school population would end up becoming mostly "girls in burkas," and would further isolate a community that is already marginalized.And there's no better way to make sure a community isn't marginalized than by making sure it gets nowhere near one's own neighborhood, right?"Once you form a school that is based on one specific culture you're ghettoizing a group of people," Ms. Lief said.
One could make the case that international schools will result in hotbeds of anti-Americanism. That has, so far, not been the case at religiously affiliated schools like the 92nd St. Y (Jewish) or Regis High School (Catholic) on the Upper East Side. Nor has it been the case at the culturally affiliated and bilingual Shuang Wen School (Chinese, Lower East Side), a public school in which NYC parents have been falling all over each other to get their kids enrolled.
We're not parents of school-aged tots yet, so we'll reserve our judgment. And we think many NYC moms and dads would be wise to do the same. The Daily News has an interesting opinion piece from an NYU history professor accusing anti-Muslim school activists as being the true religious zealots in this fiasco.
Update: We'd like to note that the woman quoted above made her statement about "burkas" in 2001 under certainly different circumstances and in a context unrelated to our post above. She contacted us to clarify that she has no ill-will towards Muslims and/or their children. We certainly take her at her word and hope our readers do as well.
(TEACHER AFRAID OF PUPILS, by alarmist at flickr)
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Race isn't the issue today. Class is.
"Race isn't the issue today. Class is."
Race and Class go hand in hand.
Hey, c'mon now, this is NYC.
There's plenty of Hate to go around, surely we can make room for the new hated group in America.
Race and Class go hand in hand.
Minorities might be disproportionately poor but the question is about tolerance and diversity, etc. Rich people really don't care what color the new neighbor is as long as he went to the right school and has the right job and acts the right way.
I don't understand - if there's a specialty school about technology, are the kids going to be couch potato/shut-ins who are online all the time?
End of Story... your points are well-taken, and I certainly believe that if there were affluent black or Hispanic folks wanting to share the school then there wouldn't be this level of uproar.
But I have to believe that the fact that the group in question wears burhkas and reads the Koran is factoring heavily into the tension that surrounds this issue.
I'd like to clarify, please. What became the quote "girls in burkas" was taken out of context. I feel no hatred whatsoever for any particular culture, and love that my children have had a diverse, inclusive public education in NYC. I had expressed a concern that some might see the new school as a publicly funded parochial school and if, for instance, girls arrived at school in burkas, culture could be confused with religion which seemed to complicate the question of publicly funding a school focusing on one set culture that happens to prize religion. I'm sorry that, out of context, my remark has been quoted and re-quoted. It makes me very sad.
Jen, many teens and tweens already are couch potatos. they are connected to the gameboy, PSP and can't wait to get on-line to play on-line games.
Playgrounds are empty. Remember when we used to play cops and robbers with cap guns, dodgeball, stoopball, chinese handball, johnnie on the pony, tag up, and many others.
kids nowadays might as well have a beer can glued to the palm since that's what they're going to do when they grow up watching the TV.
There already are Muslim and Arab schools in the city, including Park Slope.
The principal of this proposed school "Debbie" Altmontaser (spelling may be wrong) is an admitted 9/11 denier (she denies that Arab/Muslims were guilty of the terrorism, probably because she is Arab-Muslim.) She is also part of a group that is trying to institute "9/11 (denial) education" whatever that is.
Internet and Gameboy (3:54 PM): there usually seem to be kids on the playgrounds I walk past in my neighborhood on the weekends (except when deathly hot or deathly cold) and here by work during the week.
I'm not sure that Khalil Gibran being an American-educated Lebanese Christian has anything to do with why local residents should wrongly assume the school is a "terrorist academy" as the author suggests here. Perhaps the fact that Khalil Gibran wrote plainly beautiful poetry stressing the need for introspection and unity should instead be emphasized as to why those ignorant of his work should not be alarmed by a school bearing his name and which assumedly teaches in a literary tradition such as his.
I think it's far-fetched to assume the Department of Education, Joe Klein, and Mayor Bloomberg are conspiring with Al Qaeda sympathizers to establish the Khalil Gibran school.
People have a hard time getting along and, more often than not, it is minorities that suffer. Maybe we New Yorkers are not as sophisticated as we think we are?
Oh, and I have no idea what Ms. Lief is talking about. There is a separation between Church and State in this country. So there is no religion indoctrination in public schools. We also have freedom of religion here. So it doesn't matter if a girl wears a "burkha" to school.
If kids today are playing in the playground, why are so many of them overweight?
I just took my kid to visit a summer camp, almost all the participants are overweight. The camp counselor told us don't worry, we'll make sure they'll be tired by the time they get home.
Have you been to a school before morning bell? besides the cliqueish bully group, boys and girls have their nintendo ds or psp.
I think it's odd that Ms. Lief was attacked on this blog for objecting to the isolation of a community and for suggesting that they be included in schools with other ethnic groups. Indeed, fifty years after the U.S. Supreme Court declared southern segregated schools to be unconstitutional, segregation in Public Schools remains high. New York State public schools are among the worst in the country, yet Chancellor Klein and the blogger on this site champion separate schools for separate ethnic groups. Is it ok to have separate schools for children with Arab ethinicity simply because schools have been created for Chinese children? Can this form of segregation be good for anyone? It certainly doesn't foster intercultural understanding. It is amazing that the blogger and the city can advocate segregation in the name of liberalism. That is certainly a new twist on a fifty year old play from the south.
There was a typo in my previous posting. I meant "New York State public schools are among the worst in the country WITH RESPECT TO SEGREGATION (according to a recent study by Harvard's Civil Rights Project.) I did not mean that the school's themselves were among the worst in any other way.
-Carl
Hmmmmm, It's true that both Class, and Race go hand and hand . That's just the way our society has been structured through centuries of evolution . We have such a long way too go it's not even comical ! I went too school with damn near every race on the planet and befriended them all with no problems !
The issue of segregation is loaded. I think that the NYC public schools system could do more to increase the diversity of its many schools, but, as it stands, parents seem to get the chance to send their kids to the best schools they can. Sadly many schools in underserved neighborhoods are not very good- hence the rise in specialized charter schools.
I don't think that Dave is necessarily "championing separate schools for separate ethnic groups" but I do think he's pointing out that there has been a history of separate ethnic groups' schools as effective places of learning. BUt I suspect if the Shuang Wen school were founded in the 1970s, parents would think the DOE was trying to create a new generation of Communists.
And according to Inside Schools (2004), Shuang Wen's admissions are such: "Priority is given to District 1 students, siblings of children already in the program, and non-Asians." Which means the school would be open to more people in the community.
Much as I think this school is a great idea, it may all be "academic" (God, how far out of my way will I go for a good pun?)
According to today's Times, the DOE is full speed ahead on this, but as of yet no students have signed up.
1. The school is open to ALL ethnicities
2. It is a NYC public secular school - has to be
3. Not all Arabs are Muslim; in fact most are Christian in this country, include a huge population of Christian Lebanese in Bay Ridge
4. Not taking into account recent, poorer Arab immigrants, who usually within one generation jump up the economic ladder, according to the US Census, Arab-Americans make higher than the national salary average, and are more highly educated than the average. Here's the link: www.census.gov/prod/2005pubs/censr-21.pdf