Photo: ©2009 New York Times – Redux/Photo by Annie Tritt
Debbie Almontaser, center, is suing to be reinstated as principal.
By Seth Wessler
Sixth-grade students at the newly opened Khalil Gibran International Academy in Brooklyn were probably surprised last year when they opened their Arabic books to find photographs cut from the pages.
"We cut pictures of mosques out of the Arabic books," said Hassan Omar, an Egyptian man who until last spring taught Arabic and humanities at the academy, the country's first Arabic-English, dual-language public school. "We are afraid that anything could be taken out of context."
It was not exactly what teachers and the planning team had expected. The Khalil Gibran school was to have been a refuge in the midst of post-Sept. 11 New York City, a place where a mixed group of Arabic speakers and non-Arabic speakers would learn together. The school, which opened in 2007 with a 6th-grade class, was designed to grow into a middle and high school in the spirit of the more than 65 dual-language schools in New York City, which teach in Spanish, Creole, Russian, and other languages. By graduation, it was expected that Khalil Gibran students would have a command of Arabic and an understanding of the cultural context in which the language exists.
But this past September, many of the original 6th-grade students had not returned as 7th graders. The school has cut back on Arabic language instruction, is no longer set to become a high school, and has moved twice in its first year of operation. The founding principal, Debbie Almontaser, was forced to resign following a media storm over the meaning of the word intifada, and the school is being led by its third principal. None of the original teachers remain at the school, and those who have left claim they were fired or forced to leave because of the stress.