We were warned that the opening of a public school specializing in Arabic language and culture two years ago in New York would not result in anything good. And the problem with this school, the Khalil Gibran International Academy, was not that extremist music immediately started sounding [in its halls] or that that the inscription “Intifada” appeared on students’ t-shirts – something principal Debbie Almontaser refused to condemn, attributing it to a manifestation of the culture being studied. These are all details, just like the fact that the principal, who held specific cultural biases, was fired and is to this day fighting in court to return to her throne.

Critics of this kind of taxpayer-funded education sounded a warning about the most important issues: that a religious component appears in schools like this because of their very nature, even though the Constitution calls for the separation of Church and State; that such schools separate the younger generation by nationality; and that creating a school for one ethnic group will cause others to ask for the same.

Nobody in liberal, politically-correct New York paid any attention to these arguments, and as a result the Board of Education has been forced to open the Hebrew Language Academy Charter School this coming fall in Mill Basin, Brooklyn. When it opens, it will have 150 kindergartners and first-graders. By the time the latter reach fifth grade, there will be 450 students.

Now the New York Civil Rights Coalition (NYCRC) has woken up and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has opened its eyes wide, and they have asked the question point blank: Should the public school system really have schools focused on one specific, non-American culture?

“They [schools like the Arabic and Hebrew ones] aim to teach children ethnic cultural values and national self-identification. But is this really one of the goals of public schools?” asked NYCRC Executive Director Michael Meyers.

It goes without saying that he received a ponderous Jewish answer from Sarah Berman, head of the school committee, who said that a significant number of Jewish families, including immigrants from the former USSR, live in Mill Basin and want their children to become familiar with Jewish culture and to study Hebrew. But, almost three-quarters of the neighborhood’s population is Black, Latino, or Asian, and why would they want to study the same thing?

“We are absolutely convinced that studying a second language will help develop the minds of children,” said Sarah.

The school’s principal, Maureen Gonzalez-Campbell, 48, who is African American, does not know the ancient, but resurrected, language of Hebrew. She echoes Sarah’s words: “Any chance a child has to study a second language, be it Hebrew or any other, is to his advantage.” She says that parents will see the benefit of the low student-to-teacher ratio at the Hebrew Language Academy – there will be both an English-speaking and a Hebrew-speaking teacher in each classroom.

And who will pay for all this? This school, like other charter schools, will be supported by the city budget, which is to say the taxpayer. As well, large contributions are also expected from individuals. The Jewish philanthropist Michael Steinhardt has already announced that he intends to contribute $500,000 to the school annually, while the Charles and Lynn Schusterman family has pledged $250,000. You can imagine what kind of school this will be and what conversations the above-mentioned organizations will have about it.

By the way, Michael Steinhardt is Sarah Berman’s father. He founded the Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life in 1994 to renew a sense of national identification that had been lost in secular Jewish circles. His daughter, a former columnist for The New York Sun, earnestly insists that the school will not promote the Jewish religion and that Modern Hebrew will be taught using non-religious texts. This is how, in one stroke, she discourages critics of the school from discussing the separation of Church and State.

This is the perfect time to remind readers that the conservative New York Sun was one of the first opponents of the Khalil Gibran International Academy and predicted how the “nationalization” of public schools would turn out. Now let’s not judge...

In mid January, the New York Board of Regents voted almost unanimously (with one abstention) to open the Hebrew Language Academy. And the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) understood that it could not have the same complaints against the new school as it did against the Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy, a charter school with two campuses in Minneapolist-St. Paul, where salat [prayer] is performed during class, and students and even female teachers are required to dress in accordance with the rules of Sharia. And the Ben Gamla Hebrew Charter School in Hollywood, FL, where the principal is a rabbi and students are fed only kosher food, is also not the right case.

Yet it was probably in vain that the Arabic genie was released from its bottle in New York two years ago. It’s worth listening closely to the words of Diane Ravitch, professor of education at New York University and a fellow at the Brookings Institution: “Public schools should not specialize in teaching a single, non-American culture. We do not send children to public schools to learn how to be Chinese, Russian, Greek or Korean. We send them there to learn how to be Americans.”