The brouhaha over the opening this fall of a public school, the Khalil Gibran International Academy, in Brooklyn, dedicated to the study of Arabic language and culture continued last week with the replacement of the school’s principal, who resigned under pressure on Aug. 10, after making inflammatory remarks.
The latest controversy renewed the debate between critics, who charge that the school will in essence be a publicly financed madrassa, and supporters, who say that it will be secular and that opponents are being intolerant.
Most of the opposition has come from conservatives, but as we gear up for the start of the school year, there are liberal reasons for vigilance that have to do with why we have a system of public education in America rather than a regime of publicly financed private school vouchers.
The late Albert Shanker, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, once famously said that the rationale for public schools was to teach children what it means to be an American.
At their core, in free democratic societies, schools are meant to develop children who will grow up with critical minds to be productive employees and tolerant, independent-thinking citizens. But in America, given our diversity, Shanker believed that public schools should provide a common education to children from all backgrounds that teaches not only skills but also American history, culture and democracy. Public schools, to him, were critical in this process of Americanization.
Keeping Shanker’s point in mind, there are principled reasons to be concerned about the Gibran school that are not simply bigoted. Jonathan Zimmerman, who teaches history and education at New York University, has likened opposition to the school with anti-German hysteria during World War I, when state legislatures passed measures barring or restricting German language classes. But there is a significant difference between teaching Arabic in a public school — something all Americans should support — and creating a school dedicated primarily to the study of Arabic language, history and culture.
As the school moves forward, it will be important to watch whether it will teach fundamental American values, history, culture and institutions, which are enriched by a discussion of Arabic culture and history as the curriculum states. Or will the school morph into the reverse: a school seeking to instill ethnic pride in Arab culture with a sprinkling of Americana taught here and there? Will the school be critical of Arab (and American) culture where necessary or only cheerlead? Will students leave the academy with a strong grasp of America or become part of an underclass unable to navigate outside their own ethnic community?
In the late 1980s, Shanker was a strong opponent of Afrocentric schools not because he opposed the teaching of African culture, but because he worried that these schools would distort curriculum to feed student self-esteem and get them to identify with their ethnic group rather than as Americans. This approach, Shanker noted, wasn’t “multiculturalism” but “ethnocentrism.” Shanker’s position was widely accepted among the broader American public but controversial among some activists.
The New York Sun, in an editorial, said that to be consistent, multiculturalist supporters of the Khalil Gibran school should join The Sun in endorsing publicly financed private school vouchers for students “to study in a Catholic school or a yeshiva or an Arab school.” But Shanker rightly opposed both vouchers and ethnocentric public schools and recognized that extreme multiculturalists and voucher supporters were cut from the same cloth: both believed that schools were about promoting the narrow values and culture of the students’ families, as opposed to exposing students to diverse ideas.
Shanker said: “If public schools become places where children learn that, fundamentally, they are not American, there will be no reason for taxpayers to continue supporting them. And there will be little to hold society together.” Ten years after Shanker’s death, this remains wise counsel.
