Group Targets Middle Eastern Textbooks

As schools citywide open their doors today, a group critical of a new Arabic-language public school is stepping up its opposition efforts, broadening its campaign to target national school curricula.

The group, a coalition of community members, parents, and organizations called Citizens for American Values in Public Education, is seeking to stop the national use of textbooks that address Middle Eastern studies in ways the group says are too narrowly focused on Islamic culture. The coalition is an outgrowth of the group Stop the Madrassa, which has strongly opposed the creation of an Arabic-language school in Brooklyn, the Khalil Gibran International Academy.

"We want to offer textbooks and curricula that actually embrace a larger cultural picture," a spokeswoman for the group, Pamela Hall, said. "We would like to make sure that there are textbooks offered that are not propaganda, and not offered by just one source."

The group is also announcing an alliance with the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, which has been critical of the creation of the Khalil Gibran school.

Since it was first announced in February, the school has prompted harsh reactions from community groups and residents, and an earlier proposal to locate it in Brooklyn's Park Slope was defeated in May. Its first principal, Dhaba "Debbie" Almontaser, resigned last month, and was replaced by a Jewish educator who does not speak Arabic, Danielle Salzberg.