5.13.08

A tool for teachers

Thanks to Donna Nevel for getting this to me.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has published this lesson plan on Debbie Almontaser's story.

May 6, 2008 – Debbie Almontaser dreamed of a school where Arab and non-Arab children would learn together. Instead, she found herself in the midst of a controversy about assimilation — one fueled by anti-Arab bias.

• What does Mr. Pipes mean by "lawful Islamists?"
• Why do Muslim leaders, academics and others see Mr. Pipes' drive against the school as an attack that distorts the truth and plays on Americans' fear of terrorism?
• Is it significant that Ms. Almontaser's son served as a National Guardsman in the clearing effort at ground zero? Why?
• Some New York Muslims jokingly called Ms. Almontaser the city's "talking hijabi." What does this mean?
• What name was ultimately chosen for Ms. Almontaser's school? Why was the selection a strategic choice?
• Why did Mr. Pipes select the word "madrassa" to describe the school? How did using this word help his cause? Was it an accurate word choice? Why?
• How was Ms. Almontaser "rendered a radical Muslim by one group and a sellout by another?"
• When the reporter asked Ms. Almontaser what "intifada" meant, she says, "The educator in me responded." What does she mean by this?
• Which newspaper distorted Ms. Almontaser's words? How did the distortion affect her and her school?
• Why did Ms. Almontaser ultimately file a lawsuit?
• The story ends with a description of another school. How is this school similar to, and different from, the one Ms. Almontaser sought to create?

It's at their tolerance.org site.

Deb Meier, hits at top-down, small-schools reform in her current Bridging Differences blog exchange with Diane Ravitch:

My defense of small schools was originally based on only one hope. That if the school was small enough the entire faculty could sit around one table and thrash things out—courteously. Only through such a process could the school’s adults hold themselves accountable for their impact on the young. We’ve gotten plenty of “smallish” schools, mandated ruthlessly from above, in which the faculty is still too large, too numb, or too powerless to sit around and thrash anything out, and where accountability is therefore conducted “discourteously”.

Mandating small-schools reform “ruthlessly from above”

Meier’s post above just about says it all. NYT’s Sam Freedman fills in the rest with his case study of two neighboring N.Y. high schools, Lafayette and Dewey.

Regular readers will recall previous posts about Lafayette High School in Brooklyn which was previously headed by a scary grad from Mayor Bloomberg's so-called Leadership Academy who compared the school to "a nazi death camp."

The school was closed a year-and-a-half ago and the repercussions are now being felt at neighboring Dewey High.

Freedman offers a testimony to the inevitable failure of, what Meier calls, “smallish schools mandated ruthlessly from above” via school closings.

Still, the perception at Dewey is that Lafayette students did not choose Dewey for its quality, but landed there by default because they did not qualify for any of the Lafayette building’s mini-schools.

The obvious question is, why hundreds of former Lafayette students couldn’t “qualify” for any of the new small schools? What qualifications should they need?

Put a smile on statue's face, says commission

When Martin Luther King was alive, he was vilified in the media, scandalized by the government and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, and spied on as if he were a terrorist or foreign agent. After his assassination, he was turned into a harmless icon by those same forces so that school children know him only as the the friendly, passive, nice Dr. King.

On the heels of HRC'S “kitchen sink" strategy and Rev. Wright hysteria comes a new cultural battle over Dr. King's image as an activist leader, organizer and fierce critic of the institutions of racism.

The U.S. Commission of Fine Arts has rejected a design for the new MLK statue by Chinese sculptor Lei Yixin, because it makes Dr. King appear “too confrontational” and makes him resemble the “head of a socialist state.”

The commission , which reviews the design of projects in the capital area, said the design should be reworked to reflect "a more sympathetic rendering" of King.

The Washington Post’s Blake Gopnik, piles on:

A truly great monument to King would distill out the essence of his message and accomplishment (the "content of his character") instead of dwelling only on the skin and muscle and bone he presented to the world.

Taking into account Gopnik's problem with King’s skin, muscle and bone, I would suggest that in his next rendering, Lei should put a smile on Dr. King’s high cheek-boned, lightened face and have him holding a kitty cat in one arm and shopping bag from Bloomingdale's in the other.