Monday night PTA

NY1News:
Parents Voice Opposition To Arabic School At PTA Meeting

The [NYC] Department of Education took heat Monday night from parents whose kids are set to share space with the city's new Arabic language and culture school.

Parents at the Math and Science Exploratory School and the Brooklyn High School of the Arts complained at a PTA meeting about the DOE's plan to put the Khalil Gibran International Academy in the same building as the two other schools. They say the academy would take up too much space and would disrupt their programs.

Here are the two! money quotes. The first is simply idiotic:

"I like the word marriage,” said Principal Robert Findley. “We're inviting them into our home. We realize that they won't stay longer than two years."

Some marriage.

And here's the principal of the proposed "public" madrassa, Debbie (or Dhabah) Almontaser defending the teaching of Arabic:

She said she got an e-mail from an American soldier who served in Iraq saying not enough soldiers speak the language. "[That only] two percent of soldiers sent there [speak Arabic] says a thousand words of how important this school is,” said Alamonster.

So we're to think these students are going to go work for the U.S. military upon graduation? Yeah, right. Very popular career choice for NYC Arab kids.

At least she didn't claim that learning Arabic would prevent moral decay. Here's Akhtar H. Emon, president of the Arabic Language Institute Foundation (via Daniel Pipes):

Arabic is the language of the Qur'an. In order to convey the message of Qur'an in North America and Europe, we have to first deliver its language. Knowledge of Arabic can then help the Western countries recover from the present moral decay.

I understand that some people think "an ultra-Zionist understanding of the world can easily lead one to embrace a fantastical and racist understanding of the world," but as far as I'm concerned, an Arabic language and culture school across the river from Ground Zero, financed by the taxpayers of New York City, isn't the best idea I've heard all day.