I was wandering around the Internet a little bit tonight, and visited the website of my old hometown's newspaper. Hey, my high school won the Erie Bell game for the third year in a row! ;) (That's nice, dear; now, what were you saying?) Anyhoo... I came across an article on how Michael Beykirch of Corning Community College was going to start Arabic language classes there, and there were two comments in this article (from June 2005) that struck me. First was a comment that really helps to shed light on America's cultural ignorance about other cultures, in this case Arab culture:
"Beykirch hopes the classes will help shed some light on a very misunderstood part of the world. For instance, he told his students that he obtained some really neat dance music, and one student was surprised to learn that 'they dance over there,' he said."
Yes, folks, Arabs dance. (Ever heard of belly dancing?) I even dance for Milady, although that tends to create howls of laughter. ;)
The second comment was in line with a recent blog post that I wrote, Our Diplomats' Arabic Handicap. You may recall that I made the suggestion to parents that their children should be learning second and third languages, and not just European languages at that.
In the article, "R. Kevin Lacey, who chairs the Classical and Near Eastern Studies Department at Binghamton, said he was ecstatic that instruction in Arabic is expanding to community colleges. Given the climate of misunderstanding that surrounds the Middle East, it is long overdue, he said. 'It's high time. Even high schools should start thinking about this,' Lacey said. 'This should have happened a long time ago.'"
So this is a positive development.
No comments:
Post a Comment