Posted on 09/24/2006 6:19:21 AM PDT by NewHampshireDuo
It says something about a teacher, as well as his topic, when 19 teenagers are happy to show up and be reduced to first-graders – dyslexic ones, at that.
“How do you write that letter? What animal does it look like?” Mohamed Eddefaa asked during a recent session of the only public-school Arabic class in New Hampshire.
“Cat,” several students shouted, relieved after two weeks to remember one of the 28 letters in the Arabic alphabet, a series of beautiful swooping lines that neither look nor sound like anything in English.
Eddefaa, a native of Morocco, nods and writes the letter, which does vaguely resemble a cat. But it’s a cat written from right to left like all of Arabic, as one student forgets when taking a turn at the blackboard.
“You will have trouble if you write it that way,” Eddefaa said with a smile; the chalk hastily reverses direction.
The moment is one of many reminders that this group – one of a handful of public school classes in the state learning any non-European language – is facing no simple task.
Another comes when they spend two minutes trying, and largely failing, to pronounce a consonant that sounds like a cross between “ka,” “gor,” and somebody clearing their throat.
In the second row, Dan Bateson grimaces.
“My brother walks by my room and hears me and goes, ‘What are you doing?!’ I say, ‘I’m practicing Arabic!’ ” he said.
Eddeffa shakes his head at their effort.
“If it doesn’t hurt, you’re not doing it right,” he says.
And just in case they aren’t worried enough, he emphasizes that Arabic really isn’t a single language. The written form is the same from the Atlantic Ocean to the edge of the Indian subcontinent, but the spoken form varies so much that people can have trouble understanding each other: He recites the word “house” as spoken in Morocco, Jordan and Iraq, and it might as well be three separate nouns.
Why would a group that includes foreign-language stars, more used to pondering obscure translations than stumbling over one-syllable terms, put themselves through such torment?
For some, there are personal connections. For example, Rowanne Bafageeh’s father is from Saudi Arabia.
“I used to speak it when I was a baby,” she said.
Now she has forgotten it all, and said she only hears Arabic when her father calls home, but she’d like to reconnect with it.
As for her dad?
“He thinks it’s cool,” she said.
For others, the intellectual challenge is irresistible.
“I’m a senior, so mostly I do stuff that I’ve seen before. I mean, I’ve had 12 years of math class! It’s nice to come into something that is totally different,” Kristin Bellamy-Crawford said.
Brian Commins agreed – “It’s a struggle” – and added an aesthetic element to the appeal of Arabic. “I like how it looks,” he said.
On a more down-to-earth level, the class, most of whom are seniors, realizes that knowing Arabic can be a step up in college – Rivier College, for one, is going to give credit for taking it – and for future jobs.
“It took my sister to Egypt!” said Brian Paison, whose sister Michelle was one of Eddefaa’s earliest students, and who is now studying in the Middle East as part of majoring in Arabic at Tufts University.
Several students said Arabic had appeal as a window into another society – a window that’s particularly important with America fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“We hear all about European culture, and some Asia . . . but we don’t really know much about the Middle East,” Justin Brown said. “It’s a bridge to the culture.”
He has particular reason to want such a bridge: His brother is serving in the Army in Iraq.
Culture is a big part of his class: On the day a reporter visited, for example, Eddefaa emphasized the importance of formal introductions, telling a joke about how people run out of money on pay phones before getting to the point of the call because of the lengthy lead-in required by manners.
He also holds weekly talks with students about history of the Middle East, old and new.
Such dedication, combined with an extreme shortage of certified Arabic teachers, is part of why he’s in demand, facing requests to teach the language to other schools via video or online.
Dolores Pestana, a Spanish teacher who heads the world language department at Merrimack High School and is a friend of Eddefaa, says the school is aware of how special he is.
Merrimack hired Eddefaa, 40, who taught at a university in his native Morocco, six years ago, not long after he and his wife, Nada, came to the U.S. Nada now works in the special education department at the school; they have two children born in this country, ages 6 and 4.
Merrimack hired Eddefaa as a teacher of French, which is so widely spoken in North Africa that Eddeffaa says, not joking, “I don’t know what I spoke first: French or Arabic.”
Eddefaa’s English was only fair when he started here, but Pestana says his French was so beautiful that it didn’t matter. He proved a hit with the kids, and three years ago, some of them expressed interest in Arabic instruction.
The independent study grew, and this year the school made it a regular class – a last-minute decision that left Eddefaa scrambling to find a good textbook (“It took three months to find one,” he says) and creating the curriculum as he goes along.
Still, 27 kids signed up, although only 19 could fit it into their schedule, and the class includes one sophomore and several juniors, so the nucleus is there for Arabic II next year.
That would be fine with Eddefaa.
“We have a culture of hospitality,” he said. “This is giving me a chance to share my culture.”
An earlier article on an Arabic language class in CT is here: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1631603/posts
It's going to be a long conflict. We need spooks who can speak arabic.
Indeed. No doubt writing it that way somehow blasphemes Islam.
Nice to see some students not afraid of a major challenge!
The final exam could be for each student to write a personal letter to Ahmadinejad. The grade will then be based upon the response: F = invitation to join the jihad, C = no response, A = jihad declared against the student.
Depending upon the feelings of the teacher, the grading scheme could, of course, be reversed.
Let me tell you something. I know of this because my son is involved in it. Middle Eastern studies and Arabic language classes in universities are bursting at the seams in this country. The kids in theses classes were the ones in high school during 9/11. The intelligence agencies just came out with some lame report about how Iraq has created more jihadis. Well the jihadis have no idea what they created with 9/11. There is a huge wave rolling their wave in the person of young American men and women schooled in their language and their culture bound and determined that they get away with their crap no longer.
That's really encouraging.
The only thing I can say in Arabic is "Take Cover", which is pronounced "Allah Akbar."
If they don't also offer Hebrew, I am sure the ACLU will be on their ass. /sarcasm
Early career plan:
Learn Arabic, go to West Point, prosecute the war on terror...
Lots of opportunity in the private sector should that person decide to leave the military rather than make a career of it.
Sure beats the French I took in high school....
Do they teach German? Some schools in NH stopped teachng German during WW I because they were really annoyed with Germany, and a lot of ethnic Germans in NH were foremost among the annoyed.
No German. French, Spanish, Latin and Pascal (I guess programming languages count in "World Language")" If I remember correctly our town's HS offers German.
I looked through the on-line listing of courses for Merrimack HS and found "Constitutional Rights." Wonderful I thought. Here they are:
Due Process of Law
Search and Seizure
Gun Control
Student Rights
Interesting inversion on the 2nd amendment - and "student rights?"
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.