Oh man, when I heard Mansfield ISD was going to make Arabic a mandatory language for elementary and intermediate schools, I could just feel the herp and the derp rising in Texas. In case you haven't heard the latest meme emerging in the Lone Star, Mansfield ISD, which is around Dallas, has been given an education grant to teach Arabic.
The roll-out of this, or lack there of, has gone pretty much as expected with a majority of northern Texans, who love their herping.
Update: As predicted, the righwing Dark Ager machine has their biggest herald chirping away at this as we speak, one Rush Limbaugh. So as this becomes the dust up of the week, maybe Democrats can get out in front of it by saying:
- The school district should have presented the grant, and its program, to the parents as they applied for it.
- PTA could have been given the chance to vote on which foreign language, giving the community a chance to feel invested in the decision.
- Treat it as a learning moment instead backtracking and obfuscating the issue.
Of course, no one in DC will take suggestions, and this outrage should short-lived until something else outrages the Dark Agers, but this will just fuel their misguided hatred of the Department of Education.
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Mandatory Arabic Classes Coming To Mansfield
http://dfw.cbslocal.com/...
The Foreign Language Assistance Program (FLAP) grant was awarded to Mansfield ISD last summer by the U.S. Department of Education.
As part of the five-year $1.3 million grant, Arabic classes would be mandatory at Cross Timbers Intermediate School and Kenneth Davis Elementary School. The program would also be optional for students at T. A. Howard Middle School and Summit High School.
Parents at Cross Timbers say they were caught off-guard by the program, and were surprised the district only told them about it in a meeting Monday night between parents and Mansfield ISD Superintendent Bob Morrison.
The DOE has identified Arabic as a ‘language of the future.’ But parent Joseph Balson was frustrated by the past. "Why are we just now finding out about it?" asked Balson. "It’s them (Mansfield ISD) applying for the grant, getting it approved and them now saying they’ll go back and change it only when they were caught trying to implement this plan without parents knowing about it."
Oh good gravy, where to start.
First off, this should not have been told to parents in passing, because that would allow them to freak out, a very popular past-time in Texas. Add that to fact that it's Arabic, the lingua franca of them Muslims!, and the reaction in this part of Texas went just about as expected.
I would advise not reading the comments on the page, because the full-on freak flag of Texas conservatives is flying. They are not known for their ability to parse between a language and its religion. Oh no my friend, this is just a backdoor to install Sharia Law because the mere reading of Arabic makes one a sleeper cell for a Mullah in some far off land.
I wish I was joking, but that is how some of these Dark Agers think. Never mind that Arabic is also the language of Christians, a la Lebanon. No, this is just part of a grand Obama conspiracy to raise our children in accordance to his secret Kenyan Muslim beliefs.
Now, you are saying, wow, way to spin those Dark Ager talking points. I am just giving you preview of the upcoming faux outrage so you have time to counterpoint their pointless rhetoric.
But I do have a problem with this, because in Texas any mandatory secondary language of a predominantly white school district should be Spanish. This is mostly so they can talk to any fellow Texan who lives below I-10.
I know people in the Mansfield area will just view this as an attempt to help their children speak to their gardeners and pool boys, but the changing demographics should make Spanish very important to these people.
Now, let's say Texas decides not to be self-reflective and not teach our children to speak the dueling languages of Texas, English and Spanish. Let's for a moment think about what other languages that would be important for Texans to understand in the upcoming global economy.
Here is my short list and why:
- Standard Chinese - Commerce and trading, which Texas does a lot of out of our ports, both sea and air
- Standard Hindi - Texas does a lot of high tech and this would be rather useful to talk to our back office, if you will
- Arabic - This language will become less and less important as we ween ourselves more and more off oil. In fact, our closest international partner in green technologies is actually China, not the Middle East.
I can understand all of the olive branch and understanding that can come from learning Arabic, it would lead to much more tolerance between the cultures and help facilitate the melting of Arabs into our pot.
I just wish the federal government and local school district had used a little common sense in deploying this program, and maybe thought a little more on what was actually important for Mansfield ISD instead of what sounded good in a boardroom in Washington, DC.
Had they done that, we would not have nearly the herping and the derping tossing and a-turning in Texas from our lesser informed Dark Ager Republicans.