Where have all the Muslims gone?
Where have all the Muslims gone? A teacher in Detroit notes the strange disappearance of an Iraqi student.
"Even we are starting to notice that a few of our Middle Eastern students and parents and neighbors are disappearing. Another teacher said that my story made her realize she hasn’t seen a certain Palestinian student for three weeks." Mass exodus? Detention? Deportation? Where are these students going?
This really worries me. I don’t live in an area with many middle eastern people, so its not something I would have thought of. Where would these disappearing people be going? Why? That’s so scary.
And then reading the journal entry, this caught my eye:
Speaking of history, I was informed by my assistant principal that it likely wouldn’t be a good idea to get certified in history... as there is now a statewide initiative to take all social studies out of the core curriculum save for American History and to replace it with foreign language. While I applaud global language learning, I was shocked at this news. World History has already been removed from our state curriculum on the K-12 level... you have no idea how hard it is for me to teach these kids Shakespeare or comparative mythology when they don’t understand *anything* about other countries.
No way! Taking out World History from the curiculum on a STATE-wide level? That’s awful... learning world history is important! Or at least I’ve always thought so. And why would any school district replace World History with language—if you don’t understand anything about the world, learning a foreign language isn’t much good, I’d think. Ugh. Stories like this make me even more resolved to homeschool my kids for at least a while.
[via MetaFilter]
Comments
I completely agree that taking out World History seems like a bad idea. I want to homeschool as well.
Posted by: Brandy | March 26, 2003 01:54 PM
Me, too! Oh, wait. I’m not having rugrats. I’ll help you homeschool yours, Kristine!! Distance Learning with Auntie Zuly. World Religions, Composition, Blogging 101...
Posted by: Zuly | March 26, 2003 07:16 PM
You know... that kind of validates a feeling I’ve had lately. A majority of our Muslim neighbors have either disappeared or moved out. It was like a mass exodus two weeks ago.
So very strange.
Posted by: GeekGrrl | March 26, 2003 07:49 PM
How can you possibly understand the events of today if you have no idea what happened yesterday?? That’s astonishing that they’d remove world history from an entire generation’s knowledge.
Posted by: sean | March 27, 2003 06:50 AM