NEW YORK — This morning, Kaseem Gordon will make his way to Brooklyn’s Boerum Hill, joining millions of other North American children in that annual rite of passage known as the first day of school. There will be the usual mixture of loathing and anticipation, the promise of new adventures and playground reunions blighted somewhat by the inevitable return of structure and homework.
But for 11-year old Kaseem, a Sixth Grader at the new Khalil Gibran International Academy, there will be something else entirely: reporters, photographers and perhaps even a few rabble-rousers, gathering to protest the launch of the first Arabic-language public school in the United States.
Ever since the New York Department of Education approved the formation of the Khalil Gibran Academy this year, it has become a lightning rod for controversy, and exposed the widening ethnic fissures in the United States that followed the terrorist attacks of 2001.
The more trenchant critics have fashioned a crude calculus that equates Arabic with Muslim, and Muslim with jihad. For them, the school is a madrassa (Muslim school) in sheep’s clothing, a potential locus for the spread of radical Islam and, therefore, terrorism.
Keisha Watkins, Kaseem’s mother, said she does not worry about the fear-mongering that has engulfed the school’s opening, or the vehemence with which some opponents are attacking it. The same as more than half of the 60 inaugural students, Kaseem speaks not a word of Arabic (despite his Muslim name, which means “Just”) and has no ties to the culture. Ms. Watkins said she saw the school as an opportunity for him to become fluent in another language and take advantage of a rigorous academic program.
“I just wanted to put him in a school where he would learn cultural differences, learn that he can have friends outside of the people that look like him or live in his area,” she said. “With adults in general, what we don’t understand we have a tendency to fear.”
New York already funds about 70 dual-language schools, offering students the chance to take classes in Mandarin, Russian, Spanish and even Haitian creole. They are secular and their curriculums are designed to mirror those in use by the public system. A handful of French-language schools will also open for the first time this fall, but they have barely been able to attract attention amid the divisive din over Khalil Gibran, named after the pacifist Christian Lebanese poet. The school will begin with just two Grade 6 classes and then expand by one grade every year, with the hope of eventually becoming an institution that covers all the grades through high school.
That is, if it can withstand the controversy.
Some bloggers have expressed hope that the school will burn down and facetiously suggested that pupils will learn to make bombs in gym class. Right-wing columnists have pursued the story with singular zeal and an organization called Stop the Madrassa - one of several that has taken up the cudgels - is to lobby on the steps of city hall this afternoon to demand that the school be shuttered, on the grounds that church will bleed into state and the pupils risk becoming indoctrinated with radical Islam.
Rabbi Michael Feinberg, a member of a New York interfaith organization and a defender of the Khalil Gibran Academy, described the more vitriolic critics as extremists and paranoid crazies, and took pains to suggest many of them are not actually New Yorkers.
“This is clearly secular and there’s no Islamic agenda. It’s something fabricated,” he said. “They’ve been painting me as a Hamas supporter. They really have no shame. My entire life as a rabbi has been continuously denouncing violence.”
Mr. Feinberg, who is joining other supporters at the school today, worries about the psychic effects of this outcry on the Arab community, one he noted has been subject to more than its share of suspicion and surveillance since 9/11.
“It makes them feel even more under attack, more vulnerable,” he suggested. “This is telling them that even their language and culture are suspect.”
Publicly, representatives of the school have attempted to maintain a posture of calm indifference in the face of these attacks. They dismiss allegations about Islamist ties with a roll of the eyes or a disbelieving shake of the head, and insist, continuously, that they are merely focused on the task of starting classes today, much the same as most other schools.
Yet there is little doubt that the backlash, expected as it might have been, has shaken them. The school had to abandon plans to share space with another school in Park Slope, Brooklyn, after parents there complained about overcrowding and security concerns (it will now be housed in the Brooklyn High School of the Arts, in Boerum Hill). Then, the founding principal of the academy, a native of Yemen named Debbie Almontaser, was forced to resign after newspaper reports suggested she supported Arab women who wore intifada T-shirts.
Ms. Almontaser’s friends, including Mr. Feinberg, insisted her words were taken out of context, and they portrayed her as a tireless worker for peace and conciliation between cultures. Regardless, given the troubled genesis of the school, Ms. Almontaser stepped aside and was replaced by Danielle Salzberg, a woman who was raised in an Orthodox Jewish family and does not speak Arabic.
Ms. Almontaser has refused to speak with the press recently, as has Ms. Salzberg, for fear of inflaming the current passions. However, two members of the Arab-American Family Support Center, a small organization in Brooklyn that has served as a community partner for the launch of the academy, did agree to speak, and said they were not surprised by the reaction to the school.
“All of us knew it would come,” said Bret Denning, director of development at the centre. “And it won’t end, either. It will always be out there. The most effective way to answer this is to just open up a good school.”
Neither Mr. Denning, nor his colleague, school co-ordinator Danielle Jefferis, would discuss the departure of Ms. Almontaser, gently sidestepping any questions that could be construed as controversial. But both stressed that the school was not religious and expressed confidence in its ability to teach Arabic language and culture without filtering it through the lens of religion. Mr. Denning explained that this was one of the reasons the school took Khalil Gibran as its namesake: the author of The Prophet not only lived in New York, but was a Christian Arab.
“He loved the Arab culture and he loved American culture. And we’re trying to bring those together.”
The Department of Education, meanwhile, has said it will stand behind the academy, and offered assurances that Khalil Gibran - the same as any other publicly funded school - will have to abide by the same secular prerequisites.
For parents such as Ms. Watkins, though, this scuffling remains secondary to a more pressing concern: that of a mother preparing her son for his first day in a new school. Kaseem, who was raised a Baptist, has always been enrolled in a Christian academy, and today marks his introduction to the public school system, however unique the context.
“I’m finally letting go,” Ms. Watkins sighed. “I’m going to take him out of private school and see how well he fares. But I’m not worried about it at all.”
She paused a moment to reflect, before adding, with true maternal optimism: “Maybe one day he could be a part of some kind of peace talks.”
