Newsweek provides a very brief survey of the issues surrounding the teaching of Arabic in the United Statesin in light of the controversy surrounding the nation’s first bilingual Arab-English public school—the Khalil Gibran International Academy in Brooklyn, N.Y.

The National Capital Language Resource Center (NCLRC) in Washington estimates that the number of public schools offering full-time Arabic instruction for K-12 students has quadrupled from less than 10 in 2001 to more than 40 today. With enrollment up some 150 percent in university programs since 2001, the Department of Education is scrambling to meet the demand.

The article points out the educational institutions proceed cautiously into this area, even though they are aware of the need and of government support

Two years ago, after the State Department discovered, to its chagrin, that only 10 of its 34,000 employees were fluent in Arabic, it launched the $114 million National Security Languages Initiative, which includes Star Talk, a nationwide program designed to promote “strategic languages”—Chinese and Arabic—for kindergarten to college students. But as the number of Arabic-language students and programs increases, small but media-savvy groups like Campus Watch, a university-focused organization, and the Madrassa Coalition (the word “madrassa” may evoke images of militant Islam in the West but it simply means “school” in Arabic) have vowed to step up their fight. The coalition has gone nationwide as the Citizens for American Values in Public Education (CAVPE), claiming that its mission is to halt radical Islamist agendas in curricula…

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