Mandatory Arabic in Public Schools?

What should be mandatory is that our kids speak, read, write, etc. proper English. I don't even see that happening across the country. I'm in favor of offering other languages, Arabic being just one of many I think that could be offered. What about Chinese, Russian, etc.? And if I had my way, there would be no Department of Education to be giving away $1.3M of my/our taxpayer dollars to schools to mandate my/our kids speak Arabic. Gees.

Absolute indoctrination, totally disgusting. What has happened to TX? Our public schools have long been moral and intellectual sewers, courtesy of Bill Ayers, U of Chicago radical secularists, and others of the Obama school of deception, who have entrenched in our schools Marxist political correctness with intent to indoctrinate and dumb-down America's children, never to let them think for themselves, with complete complicity from the teachers' unions. This is the next step and natural end of anything akin to "education" or actual thinking and learning anything of value. The intent is to render our country intellectually impotent and morally bereft. Oh, yes, 'A MIND IS A TERRIBLE THING TO WASTE", IS NOT THE SOLE PROPERTY OF THE NAACP. It is the intent of the above cited to "waste" our children's minds and destroy their capacity to think, reason, or achieve any kind of moral wisdom. It is their intent to thus destroy our liberty and sovereignty and they are succeeding.

they should have a list,and allow the parents/child to choose which. even mandarin would probably be a better choice right now. when i went to school,they forced french on us. and i told them then i'd probably have no use for it. and what are they in dire need of here now? english/spanish speakers. a lot of good learning french did us..

laglen, I am assuming that there's a miscommunication somewhere as I cannot really believe that the education authority in Mansfield is making it mandatory for public school children to learn the Arabic language. There's just no justification or logic here. I am sure there's going to be a storm there concerning this as people in your country are so used to freedom to make one's own choices. If this is really true, then I do not think there's any choice than to accept it or find a private school where we would not be bound by this senseless implementation.

your link doesn't work. actually i think *a* foreign language should be included in the school curriculum from first grade onwards. especially in this country, the language teaching is a disgrace. your country might be slightly better, idk. the older you get the more difficult learning a language becomes and there is no reason not to. but why on earth arabic? spanish would seem an obvious option for the states, maybe as a choice with two or three others. however without a working link i don't know what the real story is.

I don't think that it should be that way. It is good be aware of cultural differences. It would help to know different languages but I do not see it necessary to pressure the students to really learn the language. I do not think that doing good on language studies should be the basis on cultural education. Knowing certain practices and beliefs of some culture is what I think the subject that should be given more importance on.

Maybe they are just preparing the kids for the future. Apparently the Muslims will take over the world without firing one shot! In case you didn't know Islam is one of the fastest growing religions in the entire world. If that doesn't bother you maybe this little tid bit will; for every 1 non-Muslim child born there are 8 Muslim children born in the world and that number is conservative. Think about that. The Muslims don't have to do anything, they will rule the world by virtue of their numbers. http://hubpages.com/hub/Muslim-World-how-muslims-will-take-over-the-world-via-population-growth

Of course it is religious. With learning Spanish (that would beneficial to children near the Mexican border, then there are some Mexicans who are not Roman Catholics, but are Protestants) then it would be a good idea. The same with learning French if you live near the Canadian border especially in New York or in Minnesota, and near Manitoba or Quebec, there are French speaking people who are not Roman Catholics. But only a few Arabians are Christian esp. due to the religious persecution going on in he Middle East. So even if the goal is not to get someone to convert, the idea is to make one more sympathetic to the Sharia law or excuse Arab speaking people who may approve of Sharia law and punish their children by killing them who decide to leave the Mslim religion. And of course there is political correctness. No make learning a new language a choice and give the resources to do so. Do not make it compulsory even when it is beneficial to do so.

I get pretty angry when forgein languages are pushed on my children. We live in America, our language is English. I feel everyone in this country should learn English.. end of discussion! I've always been kind of mad at the preschool shows that try to teach foreign languages, like Dora and Diego. I think my children should learn fluent English before being pushed into learning spanish. We're not a spanish speaking family! I understand there are benefits to being bilingual, but basically I'm just mad that we actually need to be because immigrants refuse to learn and use our language. Anyways, that's not even the point here. Yeah, I'd be mad if they forced my children to learn a specific language. In our school district it is mandatory to take a foreign language starting in 7th grade, but there are the basic 3 to choose from, French, Spanish, and I think Italian (maybe German.. it varies from school to school, when I was in school it was Italian). My son is in his 2nd year of Spanish.. and he's not all that interested in it and is actually failing right now. I think it would be best if kids could choose to take a foreign language instead of being forced to when they don't want to. When I was in high school I took 5 years of French and 2 years of Spanish. I would have chosen to regardless of if it was forced or not.. I was interested in the languages (for 10th and 11th grade I took french and spanish at the same time, obviously only 1 was mandatory).

I sense some political motive behind it.There was a time some countries in this world used to rant against too much cultural influence[unwanted]coming from USA.Looks like now its your time to rant against it.

I would not want my kid to participate. I do believe it's about religion and indoctrination, not eucating. Why not Japanese or Korean? How about something useful like Spanish?

I'm really curious how they plan to teach about the culture of Arabic-speaking countries without covering religion. It seems to me like the culture is very, very heavily rooted in Islamic teachings. Wouldn't it be difficult to create a curriculum that focuses only on the secular aspect of life in that part of the world? I wouldn't object to my daughter studying Arabic language and culture as long as it was something she was interested in. I would not agree with the school district making one language mandatory. They should offer at least a couple of different languages for students to choose from, and they should allow a student who wants to learn a different language to take it at a community college or online and receive credit for it. Based on the name of the program providing the grant I'd think they would encourage the study of more than just Arabic.