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Arabic immersion school teams up with FBI

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Some kindergartners in California spend half their days learning Arabic. Muslim immigrant families there like the program but they’re troubled by the school’s partnership – with the FBI. Hana Baba from station KALW in San Francisco has the second part of our ‘Learning in two languages’ series. Download MP3

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MARCO WERMAN: The language of the Koran, of course, is Arabic. And more and more Americans are choosing to learn that language. For the most part, it’s college students. But now a public school outside San Francisco is launching an immersion program where starting in kindergarten, students are learning in English and Arabic. Hana Baba of KALW reports from Fremont.

HANA BABA:  Fourth graders at the Fame Charter School are reading a poem in classical Arabic. The students are learning how to read, write and count in Arabic. Arabic has been part of the curriculum since the school opened its doors in 2001. And this year, the school is expanding its Arabic experience. It’s launching the country’s first public K-through-12 Arabic immersion program. Half the day’s instruction in Arabic, half in English. The school’s director Maram Alaiwat says they’re starting with the incoming class of kindergarteners.

MARAM ALAIWAT:  So they will have two worlds. They will walk into their very American, very English oriented classroom for half of the day and they’ll be moving into a second classroom where the posters and language and the toys and everything are labeled in Arabic. And that teacher will be speaking with them in full immersion Arabic meaning they will be immersed in the language immediately. Everything from asking to use the restroom to where’s my cubby. All of that will be relayed in Arabic.

BABA: Fame is open to anyone in the country. But so far, most of the students are the children of Muslim immigrants, from the Middle East, South Asia and Africa. At her home, 8-year-old Amal Abdella shows off some of the Arabic she’s learned at school.

AMAL ABDELLA: Jad means grandfather, jadda means grandmother, ab means dad, umm means mom, akh means brother, ukht means sister.

BABA: Her mother, Fatima Abdella, is an Ethiopian immigrant. Abdella wants her children to learn Arabic to better understand the Quran, though the school doesn’t provide any religious instruction. She says the school feels like a safe learning environment.

FATIME ABDELLA: You don’t see a security guard over there. We are like a family. We don’t see any police over there with a gun. We don’t hear anything, drugs going on, this teenagers fighting. So that is very comfortable for me.

RALPH DAVIS: I’m not trying to, as they say, diss the public school system by any means, but Fame is different. It’s fresh and it’s new, and it’s something that is available to all parents and children whether you be American or immigrant.

BABA: That’s Abdella’s husband, Ralph Davis. He’s a former Navy officer who grew up in nearby Oakland. He says learning Arabic will improve his kid’s job prospects in the future.

DAVIS: I know people right here in Fremont who have actually been recruited as Arabic speakers to go to Iraq. As far as working for the State Department, the FBI, even local government, county, city and state agencies, Arabic speakers will definitely be needed.

BABA:  And the FBI has expressed interest in the school. Last year, it offered a special partnership for 5^th graders called Junior Special Agents. The program encourages them to be crime-free, drug-free, and gang-free. Parent Ralph Davis says he thinks the partnership is good for the kids, the community and the government.

DAVIS: I think it will help and benefit the different agencies of the FBI, the CIA, whoever. Even local police departments and state agencies to dialogue with immigrants because that way it will give, I feel, the immigrant a feeling of security that they can dialogue with these people rather than be fearful of them. I will want my children to participate.

BABA: But some other parents I spoke with are less comfortable with the idea. They didn’t want to speak on tape. But they question why the FBI chose this predominantly Muslim school for its only partnership in the San Francisco Bay area. Some worry the program is just a way for the FBI to keep a close eye on their community. The FBI’s San Francisco representative Joseph Schadler says the reason was more mundane.

JOSPEH SCHADLER: Realistically, the entire reason we chose that school is because we were in a dialogue with the administrator because she was part of our citizen’s academy, and with her interested and excited about the possibility of the program, that is 80% of our work in getting a program like this started.

BABA: For her part, Fame director Maram Alaiwat says she understands the parents’ anxiety. She notes that many come from countries where government agencies are often abusive. But she says that’s precisely why such a program is needed, to lessen the tension between new immigrants and the feds.

ALAIWAT: My point of introducing it to our parents was to help build bridges among the community, to help the free flow of communication. I think communication is knowledge. And if you don’t communicate, that’s how fear develops and that’s how hatred develops.

BABA: Alaiwat says it’s not clear whether the FBI program will be back this school year. But for now, classes are getting underway. And Alaiwat says they have more applicants than spaces for the Arabic Immersion Program. For The World, I’m Hana Baba in Fremont, California.

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