Posted on 04/14/2008 8:23:56 AM PDT by Nachum
(IsraelNN.com) Education Ministry officials have decided to keep Arabic in the core curriculum for middle and high school students until further notice. Arabic was removed from the core curriculum earlier in the year as part of an attempt to streamline the curriculum and make it acceptable to the hareidi-religious community.
Most hareidi-religious schools have rejected the core curriculum and prefer to operate as private schools with some government funding. However, the Supreme Court recently ruled that the government cannot fund high schools that do not teach the core curriculum, a decision that would leave many hareidi-religious schools facing a budget crisis.
Arabic will continue to be taught as it is now until a new core curriculum is established and agreed upon, officials said. Students in seventh, eighth, and ninth grades currently study Arabic for at least three hours a week.
Regards
It's one thing to learn it. It's another to be required to for 3 hours a day.
The haredi schools only get some government funding? I thought those people lived off the government for the most part?
That’s B.S. spread by secularists.
It’s also another thing to be forced to study Islam.
The back story to this controversy is the Haredi objected because much of the arabic texts inevitably were a back-door attempt at Islamic conversion -— or at least were a de facto study of Islam.
Islam obviously has a integrated history with Arabic. Christians and Jews spoke Arabic long before Mohammed went to his cave.
Arabic is not hard to learn for a Hebrew speaker. Its like learning German for an English speaker.
“Islam obviously has a integrated history with Arabic.”
Which is the issue for the Haredi -— you (in paticular, children — somewhat differnet for adults) are not supposed to study other religions.
I recall a problem at a religious school I went to -— the state required all schools to have a world religion class with an approved curriculum -— I recall studying ancient Greek/Roman paganism/classics -— and the teachers collecting the books at the end of class -— with Greek/Roman paganism being chosen on the theory that no impressionable child would be swayed to become a pagan.
I should guessed it was something like that. I guess they don’t want the children to understand why the people surrounding their country want to kill them either. Its all part of their religion.
Faith comes from a choice, not isolation.
I would agree, but the arabic teachers and secular curriculum generally had an agenda.
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