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<a title="Sasha von Oldershausen's Profile" class="" href="http://www.policymic.com/profiles/95303/sasha-von-oldershausen"><img alt="Sasha von Oldershausen's avatar image" src="http://thumbs.policymic.com/tApOMXkkENfo8uEZ9RtFnEhD9Bk=/25x25/smart/https%3A%2F%2Fs3.amazonaws.com%2Fpolicymic-images%2F6e9b19372c9101801d5c53a9ced82672382dcc4f09dec0c3c94e63edf002a5b5.jpg"></a> By <a title="Sasha von Oldershausen's Profile" class="" href="http://www.policymic.com/profiles/95303/sasha-von-oldershausen">Sasha von Oldershausen</a> 18 hours ago
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<img src="http://media3.policymic.com/N2JkNGQ2YjhlNiMveU5oWTdnemc1LVhsNkxEWWluaVpjTWFWQ3I0PS8weDA6MTgwMHgxMTM1Lzg0MHg1MzAvczMuYW1hem9uYXdzLmNvbS9wb2xpY3ltaWMtaW1hZ2VzLzczMDhmODI4YTI5NmQyN2MxMDZmNjc5NjA2OTU1NzhjZDI2OWMwODY2M2ViYmFiYzg3MzUwMTY3YjRkODhjMDIuanBn.jpg" class="" itemprop="contentUrl representativeOfPage" alt="you'll, never, guess, what, foreign, language, is, now, taught, in, the, bronx, " width="840" height="530"> You'll Never Guess What Foreign Language is Now Taught in the Bronx
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<p class="">Students
at a small public high school in the Bronx are doing something rarely
seen in New York City schools: they're learning Persian.</p>
<p class="">Sara Dingledy, the founder and principal of <a href="http://www.westchestersquare.org/">Westchester Square Academy</a> (WSA), wants "to make sure that kids who come here have the opportunity for some transformative, personal experience."</p>
<p>But Dingledy's decision to implement a Persian language and culture
class at WSA was a practical, not a visionary, choice. The school's
limited budget forced her to hire only one teacher to be both a foreign
language and English as a Second Language teacher.</p>
<p>27-year-old Claire Rann fit the bill. "She could speak Persian," Dingledy says.</p>
<p class="">But that's not all. Rann has a master's degree in Iranian Studies from St. Andrew's College in Scotland and <span>can recite Iranian history with a fluency few can match</span>. Inside her classroom, however, Rann makes an effort to avoid discussing politics. </p>
<p class="">"I didn't want to lead off with that," Rann explained.
"People tend to latch onto the repressive stuff. I wanted to start with
the other cultural stuff."</p>
<p class="">In many other ways, Rann's approach to teaching
Persian language classes defies the model of foreign language
instruction commonly practiced throughout the United States. Over the
past century, nearly every federally-funded language initiatives came
out of a perceived political threat. In the 1960s, the new language of
choice was Russian; in the 1980s, it was Japanese. Now, Arabic and
Chinese are in fashion.</p>
<p class="">The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Education_Act">National Defense Education Act</a>,
which passed in 1958 just after the Soviet Union launched the Sputnik
rocket, inspired the spike in Russian language study ,which lasted until
the Soviet collapse. A component of the initiative, Title VI, defined
foreign language education for the first time in American history.</p>
<p class="">Title VI has changed over time, but targeting
"critical languages," or those crucial to U.S. geopolitical interests,
remains its focus. The current list includes Arabic, Chinese, Dari,
Persian, Hindi, Korean, and Urdu. These are among the languages that
score "<a href="http://careers.state.gov/uploads/23/86/2386f5de7f14369e5231db272ccfe423/Language-Points-2013.pdf">bonus points</a>" on the Foreign Service examination.</p>
<p class="">Shortly after the attacks of September 11, Congress
allocated $140.6 million for a so-called National Security Language
Initiative. Its purpose was to "engage foreign governments and peoples,
especially in critical regions, to encourage reform."</p>
<p class="">Not surprisingly, Arabic survived and propelled a
trend among language programs in the United States. Since 9/11,
enrollment in Arabic language programs has increased dramatically. In
fact, college campuses nationwide have struggled to meet the growing
student demand for Arabic classes.</p>
<p class="">These federal language initiatives only reflect
moments of political flux, while virtually all other education policy
within the United States — the No Child Left Behind Act, for example —
turns a blind eye to foreign languages, focusing on math and English
instead.</p>
<p class="">By 2008, only a quarter of public and private
elementary schools offered foreign language instruction. It is no wonder
that the United States is woefully monolingual. Just 18% of Americans
speak a second language. In contrast, 53% of Europeans are billingual.</p>
<p class="">Angela Jackson, the founder of <a href="http://www.globallanguageproject.org/">Global Language Project</a> (GLP), seeks
to reverse this trend. The organization partners with public New York
City elementary schools to establish long-term language programs to
encourage early learning. Her program targets disadvantaged elementary
school students in under-served communities, many of whom, she says,
spend most of their lives within a five-block radius. Jackson cites
language as the key that turns neighborhood kids into global citizens.</p>
<p class="">At a New York University colloquium last February,
Jackson demonstrated the potential of her immersion-based program. She
played a video of a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-NJksDKb8g">kindergarten class singing in Arabic</a>, a language that earned the highest level ranking on the U.S. State Department's scale of difficulty.</p>
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<p class="">Meanwhile, in the quest for language acquisition and
cultural understanding, Jackson has confronted a different
challenge. One of the schools partnered with GLP, Harlem's PS 368,
stirred controversy in 2012 after it decided to require all of its
students to enroll in Arabic classes.</p>
<p class="">The resulting dissent was, in many cases,
thinly-veiled racism. Right-wing blogger Pamela Geller wrote, "Look what
they are doing in Harlem in all places. Do you think the children will
be [taught] that blacks are referred to as their <em>abid</em> (slave) and <em>abeed</em> (slaves) in Arabic?"</p>
<p class="">Jackson says the reaction only highlights the racial
ignorance that still exists in America. "It's so important that we do
open the minds of our students and our community," she says. "Arabic is
one of the most spoken language in the world."</p>
<p class="">But WSA's small Persian language class has managed to
slip under the radar of right-wing bloggers. And in most cases, parents,
none of whom have a Persian background, support the choice to teach
Persian. "I know there's at least two or three kids whose parents did
not want them in the Persian class, but then the kids actually pushed to
stay in," Dingledy, the WSA principal, said.</p>
<p class="">Dingledy hopes that in spite of the current tensions
between the United States and the Middle East, her students will be able
to take a trip to Iran. "I'm open to the possibility of finding a way
to actually have them go," she says. </p>
<p class="">"Maybe the student embargo is something that's lifted
in the next four years as things inevitably thaw. I sort of feel like
it's going to thaw, somehow. That's my goal so I guess I'm not deviating
from that."</p>
<a href="http://www.policymic.com/articles/77101/you-ll-never-guess-what-foreign-language-is-now-taught-in-the-bronx">http://www.policymic.com/articles/77101/you-ll-never-guess-what-foreign-language-is-now-taught-in-the-bronx</a><br>
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