"The school's director-general, Abdalla I. Al-Shabnan, said Wednesday that.. the academy has adjusted its curriculum in recent years and removed some of the inflammatory language that had been included in the Saudi text.... He also pointed out that many of the school's teachers are Christian and Jewish."
http://www.wtop.com/?nid=600&sid=1271550
Two points:
a) We're talking about a school in Fairfax, Virginia that has a just a little too much Saudi funding and influence for the Feds to be comfortable on the matter. So they've recommended shutting it down until they can verify that the curriculum meets basic standards of civility. I.e. no mentions of an hour of judgment delayed "until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them." Waiting to see the reaction from local free speech orgs on this one.
b) The 'some of my best friends are Jewish and Christian' line is no more convincing than when you have other ethnicities and religions switched into the sentence.
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2 comments:
My thoughts- if its a Saudi school they should be able to teach a Saudi curriculum (even though I believe said curriculum is wrong) if they are trying to say the degree one gets is analogous to a public school's education definitely need to reform the curriculum so in line with standards that the Dept. o Ed. has. But i do love living in a country where anyone can say anything and I would rather have free speech than hate speech laws
Where does the prohibition against shouting fire in a crowded theater start coming into play? I don't know what the curriculum of this school actually is and I will cast no aspersions on it until I do - other than to note that they already seem to have reformed the texts that they were using. But let's take this idea for a second and say that there is in fact A school (and there are DEFINITELY schools) teaching some sort of extremist curriculum and calling for violence against certain 'other' groups. Assuming students can also get an adequate education in Reading, Riting and Rithmetic, you're ok with that?
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