Jonathan Zimmerman: Arabic school's critics are the true zealots
Hey, stop teaching the language of the enemy! Don’t you know there’s a war going on?
That’s what self-described American patriots said about German during World War One, when instruction in the language all but disappeared from our public schools. And that’s what they’re saying today, about a proposed Arabic academy in New York.
Three months ago, the city Department of Education announced plans for its first public school dedicated to the study of Arabic language and culture. Named after Khalil Gibran, a Lebanese-born poet and philosopher, the new academy was slated to share space with P.S. 282, an elementary school in Brooklyn.
But last Friday, Department of Education officials declared that they would seek a different site for the school. They cited complaints from P.S. 282 parents, who feared that the Gibran Academy would overcrowd the building.
No matter where the academy is located, however, it will also face attacks from Americans who simply don’t think we should have a public school dedicated to Arabic instruction. The city already sponsors other dual-language schools, of course: on the Lower East Side, for example, the Shuang Wen Academy teaches classes in both English and Mandarin.
But Arabic is different, these critics say, because there’s a war on. And the enemy uses its language to recruit new players for its team—and to put us all in peril.
Listen to Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum: “Arabic language instruction is inevitably laden with pan-Arabist and Islamist baggage.” Calling the Gibran Academy a “madrassa” instead of a school, Pipes goes on to quote several teachers—in the United States and abroad—who insist that Arabic study promotes “Islamicist” and “extremist” views.
Trouble is, that’s precisely what critics of German-language instruction said after the United States entered World War I in 1917. And their efforts led to one of the most hysterical, unjust campaigns in the history of American schools.
According to the California State Board of Education, for example, German was “a language that disseminates the ideals of autocracy, brutality, and hatred.” Even worse, other educators said, German classes would harm the war effort. “What this nation needs is a hundred million hard hearts toward Germany,” one Ohio superintendent wrote. “German instruction in the schools tends to soften them.”
By September 1918, fourteen states had passed measures barring or limiting German instruction. Hundreds of local districts did the same, fueled by vigilante mobs. In Lewiston, Montana, a crowd stormed the local high school, seized German books, and burned them; in Yankton, South Dakota, students sang “The Star Spangled Banner” as they dumped their own German books into the Missouri River; and in Chicago, pupils ripped out pages from their texts that allegedly praised the German Kaiser.
Did some German-Americans—and some German-language teachers—oppose American involvement in World War One, or even favor their ancestral homeland in the conflict? Of course they did. Most notably, journalist George Sylvester Viereck spread pro-German propaganda through a wide range of publications. Two decades later, Viereck would be jailed for serving as a Nazi agent.
That’s why we should scrutinize any new Arabic program, making sure it’s teaching in an impartial and evenhanded fashion. There IS a war going on, and there ARE people—inside of our country, not just outside of it—who want to kill as many Americans as possible. And we should take every measure to see that no such individuals gain a voice in our public school curriculum.
But there’s no reason to think that the Gibran Academy would act as a kind of fifth column, turning patriotic Americans into acolytes of Al Qaeda.
Critics of the school have noted that its principal-designate, Debbie Almontaser, once said that American foreign policy in the Middle East helped trigger the September 11, 2001 attacks. She also said she did not regard the 9/11 attackers “as either Arabs or Muslims.”
So what? The question is not whether you agree with everything Almontaser has said; I certainly don’t. The issue is whether she would use the Gibran Academy to propagandize for her views. And if you think Almontaser is more likely to do that than any other educator, well, then, you’re simply prejudiced against Muslim and Arabic-speaking people.
And you’re also echoing the hateful crusade against German, which was chillingly successful. In 1915, almost 25 percent of American high school students took German; by 1922, less than one percent did. That was a huge loss for American education, and an even greater one for American democracy. Shame on the critics of Arab instruction, for making the same mistake twice.