Arabic Classes Bridge Culture Gap

Young students broke out into laughter after a classmate responded si instead of naam for the word “yes” in the Arabic language.

“I can’t help it,” the student said, “I’ve taken too many years of Spanish.”

A dozen students, seven of whom are in high school, drilled themselves with basic conversation routines during their last day of instruction Tuesday night.

And today, each student will receive a certificate acknowledging the completion of 90 hours of course work in the language, marking the end of a three-month pilot program before it is officially recognized by the Huntington Beach Union High School District this fall.

Huntington Beach Union will be the first high school district in California to offer credit for the Arabic language--an important milestone for Muslims, who say acquiring the language is often difficult outside predominantly Muslim countries. Muslim parents say they are eager to have their children learn Arabic so that they will better understand their religion and retain their heritage.

“Muslims in this country are looking for accessibility to Arabic language,” said Shabbir Mansuri, an Indian American and father of three children who took the course.

Spoken by a sixth of the world’s population, Arabic is an integral part of Islamic faith. Muslims pray out of Islam’s holy book, the Koran--written in Arabic--five times a day.

Approximately 6 million Muslims live in the United States; about half a million are in Southern California--a large number of them in Orange County, according to the Council on Islamic Education.

The council, a nonprofit organization dedicated to teaching about Islam and Muslims in public schools, launched the Orange County pilot program earlier this year when the spring semester began, a few months after it received the go-ahead from the Huntington Beach high school district. The Arabic course was offered after school on Tuesdays, and like the district’s other nontraditional language programs, it was taught off campus.

“I took this class because I wanted to learn how to read and understand the language, which is the language of the Koran,” said Romy Khouraki, 16, a first-generation Syrian American who attends Marina High School in Huntington Beach.

The demand for Arabic language in the classroom is increasing in the United States, said Shabbir Mansuri, founder and director of the council, which is based inside a classroom of a onetime elementary school in Fountain Valley.

In the pilot program alone, there were children of Syrian, Lebanese, Egyptian, Indian and Pakistani parents. Mansuri said the mix will increase as word gets out about the program.

Most of the students who attended the class found out through a flier at the local mosque in Garden Grove, the Islamic Society of Orange County.

Because it was a dry-run class, Mansuri allowed three elementary school children, two college-level students and two high school students from outside Huntington Beach Union’s district.

The council has scheduled summer open classes for anyone, and in the fall another independent course will be offered concurrently for non-district students.

The Arabic language program adds to the six other nontraditional languages offered for credit at the high school district. Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Hungarian, Russian and Hebrew are also offered outside of district schools.

Despite the demand for these foreign language classes, the district does not list them in its official class catalog. Instead, interested students must see academic guidance counselors to apply to take the language class off school grounds, said Assistant Supt. John Myers.

As with the rest of the language programs, the Arabic course was approved by the district’s trustees after it met criteria set by the California Board of Education, Myers said.

And as with the rest of the off-campus language classes, the district does not pay for the students’ instruction in Arabic. Students pay a tuition of $150, which Mansuri said goes toward the teacher’s salary.

The Council on Islamic Education subsidizes the balance of the cost of the class from its yearly budget, which is comprised entirely of donations from Muslim businesses in Orange County, Mansuri said.

The council, with the aid of Cal Poly Pomona professor Sylvian Castel de Oro, had worked two years to get the school district’s approval for to teach the language.

The council has also recently requested approval from the Garden Grove Unified, Santa Ana Unified and Newport-Mesa Unified school districts, and is waiting for their responses. Mansuri said he targeted the Huntington Beach school district first because it was closest to the council.

As the program in Huntington Beach gains momentum and establishes itself in Orange County, Mansuri said the council will also begin to expand the program into Los Angeles County.

Only three recognized institutions offer Arabic in Southern California, said Castel de Oro, who is a member of the Utah-based American Assn. of Teachers of Arabic. UCLA offers degrees up to a doctorate; Claremont College and Los Angeles City College offer college-level Arabic.

Still, Castel de Oro, who will teach the second level of the Arabic program in the fall, predicts more schools will begin offering the language as members of the Arab American community feel a need to understand their cultural heritage.

“They are going to reach an identity crisis and people are going to become increasingly interested in this, much like Spanish language has become important to the Latino community in this country,” he said. “Many second- or third-generation Arabs don’t know how to speak the language.”

School district officials agree.

“The melting pot theory is no longer valid,” said Carla Rush, curriculum director for the school district. “Each of us wants to validate our heritage, and language is an important part of that.”

A typical language class goes beyond the realm of language structure and grammatical rules and teaches about the various cultures that influence the particular language.

“That’s a very high priority for parents who want their children to learn about their roots,” said Rush, who taught Spanish and English as a second language for several years.

When Castel de Oro teaches Spanish, for instance, he integrates a lot of history into the class. Muslims from Africa conquered and occupied most of the Iberian peninsula for nearly 800 years. He teaches his students that about 4,000 Spanish words came from Arabic: arroz (rice), for example, is the same in both languages.

Sana Ahmedani, 16, a University High student, agrees that the language course helps her better understand where she comes from.

“We already had a little Arabic background from reading the Koran. The class is less learning for credit than it is for learning for yourself,” she said. “And besides, it’s fun.”