The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind.
-Khalil Gibran

Rant on -

Some New Yorkers might have heard recently about a new public school opening up in the Brooklyn, for everyone else, the Khalil Gibran International Academy is a school opened this week to teach all students normal classes in English and Arabic.

Personally, I'm not to keen on the idea of a publically funded school to specilize in any language apart from English (In US only). That money to hire teachers, and prepare for a cirriculum for mixed language schooling plus a lot of other issues cost more money, which could be used to hire more teachers, or give the existing one raises, and/or fund other programs for existing schools.

However, I am appalled by the response of some. The school was labelled as an extremest religious muslim school to teach children how to strap on bombs on themselves and hate Jews more. Now, New York has many other schools that are taught dual-langual, but since this one is English - Arabic, it was naturally assumed by a fair few to be a school of violence!?!
Growing up in Dubai, and seeing that there are good and bad people there, just like everywhere in the world, I know that is an extremely unfair assessment of classifying the speakers of an entire language as evil Jew killing, Nazi like, America and freedom haters.

If those who had even bothered to check, Khalil Gibran, who the school was named after, was a prominent poet, raised in Lebanon and live in America, provided so much to the American culture, believed in pacifism, not violence.

Never mind that several Jewish groups have repeatedly vocalised support for the school, and that the school has a Jewish principle, the students will still be taught how to slaughter evil America, because ofcourse, that's what Arabic is about.

For six years, because of where I came from, I took a fair bit of attacks, among various things focusing on my integrity, and my loyalty to my country. And I took it, because what happened that one day scared a lot of people, and I can understand fear, but attacking a group of grade 6 students by branding them America's future terrorists is utterly disgusting.

- Rant off