I’ve often commented here and on Facebook that the dumbest people in America, it seems are public school administrators. There are just so many examples of decisions that have been made that are devoid of anything resembling common sense. Often, the dumb decision is rescinded after people who actually have common sense become outraged. Here’s the latest case:
A Mansfield ISD program to teach Arabic language and culture in schools is on hold for now, and may not happen at all.
The school district wanted students at selected schools to take Arabic language and culture classes as part of a federally funded grant.
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 have been taught at Cross Timbers Intermediate School and other schools
feeding into Summit High School.
There’s something funny about this CBS-affiliate follow-up story, though. It doesn’t mention anywhere that the courses would have been mandatory, which the affiliate reported originally. Instead, the story makes it sound like the opponents are just a bunch of people who didn’t want Arabic taught for any reason. But that’s not true at all. I can’t find that CBS affiliate story, but here’s an excerpt from yesterday:
Officials at the Mansfield Independent School District in Mansfield, a town in north central Texas, have some explaining to do to parents about a proposed program to teach students Arabic culture and language.
The problem with the program is that the Arabic Studies program is not an elective, such as the language studies programs that the school district offers in Chinese, Spanish or Russian. The Arabic Studies program was to be mandatory and would have been imbedded in virtually everything the students studied, down to learning in math class about the origins of algebra.
Now, why would they do that?
