Hollywood, FL – A Hebrew-language charter school can’t teach Hebrew, at least for now, the Broward School Board decided on day two of the new school year.
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“We basically lied to those parents,” School Board member Phyllis Hope said Tuesday as her colleagues debated the controversial school’s future.
Ben Gamla Charter School opened in Hollywood on Monday to about 400 students under the premise that it would be a bilingual kindergarten through eighth-grade campus.
The school has come under increased scrutiny and criticism since the School Board approved it in May. At the center of the debate is the curriculum. Depending on whom you ask, the school is either a secular, bilingual campus or a taxpayer-funded school that violates the U.S. Constitution’s separation of church and state.[Sun-Sentinel]
I don’t get this. Teaching Hebrew (the language, I suppose – even if they include a little Israeli culture, it’s far from teaching Yiddishkeit) is a violation of the separation of church and state, but teaching Islam isn’t?! That’s ludicrous!
Is only Hebrew bilingual a problem? So many children are taught in other languages since English is no longer an important basic. We teach children in Spanish because they never learned English. And then we teach others Spanish to communicate with them. Why is there no violation to somebody’s rights in that?
this is all dov hikind’s fault.
Not sure why they are making such a big deal about this school. We have schools that are supposed to teach English where kids graduate only speaking Spanish.
Do Jews have dhimmi status in the US? or are we full citizens despite our unwillingness to conform to the religious beliefs of the Christian nation we live in?
To answer this question, try to open a bilingual Hebrew charter school in Florida or vote without entering a Church.
Jews ARE double taxed in the US, we pay for public schools which, far from being “secular” indoctrinate children to Xtian values, holidays and culture and then pay again to educate our children.
We pay for public services such as police and ambulance and then find that our community members are not properly properly protected so we fund Hatzola and community watches.
We pay taxes to support public social services organizations and a secular court system which we do not use and then we pay to support our own social services organizations and religious courts.
Now we know where we stand in the issue of separation of “Church and State”. We are separated from many of the benefits of living in the “State” because we refuse to conform to the “Church” that is the official religion of the country we live in.
The parallels to pre Expulsion Spain are incredible and I hope that everyone will study the history of the Jews in Spain with their children.
What does this have to do with church and state? There are multilingual schools all over the country, teaching Spanish, French, Arabic, Chinese, etc. etc. etc. So what if there’s a school where the curriculum is in Hebrew? Maybe they should teach Arabic as well and then there wouldn’t be as much of an outcry (in the name of “balance” and “fair play”)
(btw, the whole “church vs. state” concept is something that the founding fathers would have found to be alien, to be sure)
There are two streams (or screams) going on in opposite directions. The Ben-Gamla (Hebrew) School, in Fla. is ordered to stop teaching Hebrew, even though they were pre-approved. The Khalil Ghibran arab- theme School, on the other hand, is ready, willing and able to teach
a lot more than arabic/themes. i.e. (intifada-nyc)and there are huge demonstrations in favor of it.
And the (NYC) administration seems to be going along with it.
Separation of Church and State? Sounds familiar!!!(from my school days) Come to Brooklyn, where such laws don’t exist, at least for some elements of society. We the taxpayers, are forced to fund a school, in OUR neighborhood, that WILL officially teach and preach the “Koran”, but will probably teach all else “necessary” to raise upstanding members of their society. Double standards, anyone???