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Arab-Americans and Schools

© Aida Hasan

Educational researchers, teachers, policy makers, and parents all have their opinions on what causes a student to succeed or fail. Is it the curriculum? Is it the quality of teaching? The relationship between teacher and student? The subject of Education and learning is filled with complexities and uncertainties. One thing that is certain, however, is the importance of culture/ethnicity to learning. In the 1960's and 70's the realization that American students are in fact different from each other was at its heyday. Multicultural education was beginning to become a popular term in Education. More attention was focused on the fact that America is very culturally diverse, and to ignore this diversity in the classroom would only be harmful to the student. Since then, many teachers have attempted to include cultural lessons and activities in the classroom. Today, there is a conscious effort by American educators to maintain a multicultural philosophy in the schools such as with African American, Hispanic, Native American and Asian/Pacific American cultures. Unfortunately, the Arab American as a minority is all too often ignored.

Clearly, culture alone does not account for all the failures or successes of students. However, overlooking a students culture, and ethnicity means ignoring their individuality and uniqueness. Students who are among the minority and disenfranchised groups, such as Arab-Americans, have been, in a sense, taught that they have no culture by a process of deculturization. The students are first deprived of their own culture, and then conditioned into adapting the values of another culture. Recognizing a students cultural heritage, rather than ignoring it, matters a lot to many students themselves, especially Arab-Americans. It isn't too difficult to imagine the benefit of having one's cultural heritage acknowledged and celebrated in the classroom, and its effect on a students self esteem and sense of belonging.

For Arab-Americans the situation is a bit more complex than mere inclusion of aspects of the Arab culture. There is also the need to remove negative images and ideas about Arabs that are already out there. For Arab-Americans, it isn't just being overlooked that is the problem. It is the fact that when they are noticed as being of Arab heritage, it is often in an unfavorable way. James, a 16 year old Lebanese-American student in Missouri, describes his experience of being what many Arab-Americans have described as an "invisible minority"-- a minority neither recognized nor understood -- and being stereotyped:

"We had a foriegn language month in school. They had posters and signs and everything. Spanish, French, Spain, Italy-- they had all these signs and posters and pictures and stuff all over the school.....There was Chinese; they had Japanese; they had Korean. They had lots of stuff. Why didn't they have Arabic? I don't know....