Teach Arabic in public schools

posted on: Apr 5, 2015

A student at Pine Bush High School in upstate New York recently recited the Pledge of Allegiance in Arabic to help celebrate National Foreign Language Week. By the end of the day she had been verbally harassed, the class president who had invited her had been punished and the school was in an uproar.

This is perhaps an isolated case (though a similar controversy took place in 2013 in Colorado). But it indexes two disturbing trends that overlap when it comes to anxieties about Arabic language.

Chicago Arabic program sends debate team to Qatar
The first is willed monolingualism and a widespread fear of foreign languages. The second is open and unchecked racism toward Arabs and, by loose association, non-Arab Muslims.

The situation seems to be getting progressively worse. Hate crimes toward Muslims are five times more common today than they were before 2001, and though Muslims make up only about 1 percent of the U.S. population, 14 percent of religious-based hate crimes target Muslims, according to FBI reports.

Source: www.chicagotribune.com