A poet slips

[A. Katz]

Tom,

I feel the need to point out a few things:

1) There are no Arab students in the Israeli primary schools. There are 
those whose native language is Arabic, but they are not ethnically Arabs.
Israeli citizens who do not identify as Israeli used to think of themselves as 
fellahin and now often identify as Palestinian -- precisely because they 
were not allowed to go to an integrated school where the only language 
spoken is Hebrew. They are ethnically Judeans who never went away.

2) The language of Genesis is the language that was revived by Zionists in 
the 19th century. I learned to read Hebrew in the language of Genesis. 
(And yes, I was born in Israel.) My father learned to read Hebrew in the 
language of Genesis. He was born in Poland. It was his first language, 
and the first language he was literate in. His parents were Zionists 
who learned to read Hebrew in the language of the OT. If it were not for 
people who learned to read Hebrew in the language of Genesis, there would be no 
native Hebrew speakers in the world today.

Right cortex or left is a personal matter, depending on how you are wired. 
Left handers and right handers do it differently. But native speaker or 
oursider has everything to do with how you are treated and which school 
you go to.


      --Aya

http://hubpages.com/hub/ISRAEL-The-Two-Halves-of-the-Nation

http://hubpages.com/hub/My-Grandfathers-Voice-Recordings-of-Benzion-Katz

On Thu, 30 Sep 2010, Tom Givon wrote:

>
>
>                                     A GREAT POET CAN STILL GET IT WRONG
>
>        I  came  to know of Salman Masalha ("Arabs, speak Hebrew!", 
> Haaretz/English, International  Herald  Tribune  9-27-10) accidentally by 
> stumbling a on his truly  great quote:
>              "All fixed identities are imposed from the outside.
>                Whoever  has a clear identity knows it can assume multiple 
> forms".
> In the context  of Palestine/Israel, what a breath of  fresh, rare clarity. 
> Still, like the rest of us mortals, a  great poet can on occasion get it 
> wrong  too, and Mr. Masalha--may he be forgiven; pun intended--surely got 
> only one third of the story right. At first, he was led astray be the 
> academic researchers he cited, who claimed that the lagging reading skills of 
> Israeli-Arab students is correlated  to lagging  R-hemisphere  activity, 
> then explained this neurological lag by suggesting that the Arab script 
> requires more contextual analysis. But  it is the R-hemisphere of the human 
> cortex that is more context oriented, less automated. If Arab-reading 
> students required more contextual labor, it should have been registered as a 
> higher R-hemisphere activity, not lower.
>         Works by M. Posner, S. Petersen, M. Raichle and S. Dahane, among 
> many others, have established  beyond  reasonable  doubt  that written words 
> in all languages (English, Mandarin, Hindi, Amharic, Hebrew, Arabic, etc.) 
> are  decoded automatically in an L-hemisphere module on the boundary of the 
> occipital and temporal lobes (just past Brodman's Area 19), along the ventral 
> visual object-recognition 'stream'  that flows  from the back to the front of 
> the L-cortex. And the L-cortex is in general responsible for  the more 
> automated--less context-dependent--processing of language (as  well as 
> visual, motor and other skills). The visual word-recognition module is,  in 
> turn, recruited  from  the pre-existing  visual object-recognition 
> ventral-stream  module. A considerable amount of life-time practice and 
> repetition is required to affect this late-cultural adaptation. The human 
> brain is not (yet) genetically configured  at birth for visual-word 
> recognition, only for visual-object recognition. A similar cultural 
> adaptation, this one for math, has been shown for (Dahaene & Cohen, 2007; see 
> recent article in The New Yorker by Oliver Sachs)
> in the L-pareita lobe, an area originally configured for analysis of 
> object-location in space.
>             Mr. Masalha  then, on his own, points out to a more plausible 
> right answer: Arab students, in Israel as well as all over the Arab world, 
> are  not  taught literacy in  their native language (Falastini, Maghrebi, 
> Masri, Yemeni, etc.), but in a frozen literary instrument harking back 1,400 
> years or more. That is, in a foreign language. The discrepancy would be  just 
> as great  if  Israeli kids were taught  their Hebrew literacy  first in the 
> language of Genesis; or if  French  students  were taught literacy  first in 
> the language of  La Chançon de Roland, Guilhome de Machaut, or Chrê tien de 
> Troyes. Or  English-speaking  kids in the language  of Beowolf. As far as my 
> frail guessing powers go,  remedying the situation would be much easier by 
> combining two well-known verities of second language acquisition: (a) Teach 
> them  both early, together--'co-ordinated bilingualism'. And (b), teach 
> literacy first in the student's spoken native language; only then gradually 
> 'stretch' it to more literary genres.  This method, bhy the way,  was 
> suggested in the late 1930's by no other than  L. Bloomfield, in a book 
> outlining a  'phonics-first ' literacy  program for native English speakers. 
> Rather than depriving Israeli-Arab students of literacy in their own--equally 
> glorious--native language, just teach them smart.
>              For  his last culprit, the presumed--tho  hardly 
> unique--vulgarity  of Arab media, Mr. Masalha lapses into well recognized 
> prejudices of  the educated classes. While readily endorsing his aesthetic 
> sentiments about modern media, I would still like to point out that the 
> 'vulgar' genre is  much closer to the Arab students'  spoken native language, 
> and  if anything should facilitate the easier  initial acquisition of 
> native-language literacy. Respectuosamente, ma'-salaam,
>
>                                                                                                                                               T. 
> Givón
>
>