(Israel) Education Ministry plans Arabic lessons for all fifth graders

[shira]

Cue the bigots calling this a conspiracy since Israel can do nothing right, ever.

The Education Ministry plans to introduce spoken Arabic lessons for all students in the fifth grade.

The new scheme will be piloted in a handful of locations at the start of the next school year, before being expanded to every school in Israel, Walla reports.

At present, Arabic literature is only taught from 10th grade and while compulsory on paper, teaching of the subject not enforced by the ministry. Previous attempts to introduce spoken Arabic for fifth graders proved successful only in areas of Haifa and northern Israel, the report says.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/education-ministry-plans-arabic-lessons-for-all-fifth-graders/

[Little Tich]

1. Know Your Enemy: How Arabic Is Taught in Israel's Jewish High Schools

Source: Haaretz, Sep 08, 2015

The teaching of the language has been coopted by the army's intelligence corps, leading to teachers who don't speak Arabic and students who study it only in the hope of foiling terrorists.

“Students studying Arabic ... We need your help in foiling a terror attack about which we have received numerous alerts.” This is how a lesson taught by soldiers to junior high school students begins. The goal of the activity — which is part of larger joint program of the Israel Defense Forces Intelligence Corps and Israel's Education Ministry — is motivate students to “learn and understand the importance of the Arabic language.

The method chosen to convince students to study Arabic is a series of threats and fear mongering. The imaginary terror attack is meant to take place in the students' own school, apparently in order to make the experience even more powerful.

“For years the educational system has focused on training ‘intelligence fodder’ for the IDF,” says Prof. Reuven Snir, Dean of Humanities at the University of Haifa and a professor of Arabic language and literature.  

This lesson plan, from August 2012, was written by instructors a unit called TELEM — a Hebrew acronym for “fostering Arabic and  Middle Eastern studies,” — which is part of the IDF’s elite 8200 intelligence unit, and operates in schools. The lesson plans say it is intended for eighth and ninth grade students, but elsewhere it states it may also be used for seventh grade. During the lesson the students must complete four tasks: The first is discovering the location of the terror attack through a crossword puzzle. The second is obtaining information on the terrorist ("who has a mustache, black hair and is serious looking&quot . Their third task is to decipher a conversation in Arabic about the transfer of weapons; and finally the fourth is uncovering the timing of the attack.

Read more: http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.674964

Note: Haaretz Premium article. Google title for access.

The reason for posting this article is that I believe that the current government can't do anything right, and that the classes in Arabic will be used to demonize Arab Israelis.