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Old 04-28-2008, 04:54 PM   #16 (permalink)
roachboy
 
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Location: essex ma
ok so first off there's one article, will, and it works in a more or less straight line logically. there's no particular reason to highlight--and i think that highlighting in a single article is patronising--like it's assuming you're not able to read for yourself.
you**are** able to manage a single article, aren't you?
there's no good direction to go with this.

consider the ability of someone opening a thread to post a long article with the expectation that folk will read the article to be a kind of constraint.
like a rule that binds the players in a game.
if you don't want to read it, dont play the game.
but the assumption behind the op is that the article is interesting: i think this pays off-----so there we are.
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i don't understand the "issue" in an immigrant largely euro-society with "multi-cultural" cirricula. that sort of linguistic and by extension cultural (a word i think is problematic) diversity is an integral part of the history of the us as a whole. so if you locate yourself as an "american" i would think that you'd really have no choice, if you're even a little consistent logically (that is, in the context of a logic that takes account of history), but to endorse the school, and the idea of the school, in principle.

another way: what exactly does an american "monoculture" mean? what is it? isn't everything about "american culture" in a sense mongrel?
isn't that true of everyplace?

personally, i think that we are so mongrel, so multiple, that the notion of culture is itself a problem...i don't see how there are "cultures" or "monocultures"--everything, everywhere, is mixing, is hybrid, is mongrel.....


second: even if you don't agree with the above, there's another angle: teaching arabic in school is no more objectionable than teaching spanish or teaching french or teaching latin, is it?
if it is--apart from the nitwit reasons adduced by pipes, horowitz et al, why is it a problem?
let's assume that there was, once upon a time, a reason for insular, parochial monlingual americans to he happy about their ignorance, parochialism as expressed by being monolingual--those days are over--so on pragmatic grounds, learning another language in school seems necessary.
and if the population of this school was 60% arab-american--and if alot of those kids don't speak arabic, but are learning it in this school--where's the objection?

i don't see it.
where's the problem?
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Last edited by roachboy; 04-28-2008 at 05:02 PM..
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