Opening the 2007-2008 Course of Study booklet, students will find a new course addition to the World Language Department: Arabic. The Spring Term course will be part of a sequence and will follow one of two history courses focused on the Middle East, and/or an Islamic Cultural Studies religion and philosophy course. Students will be given the option the take each class individually as well. “There are two primary goals of adding an Arabic course to our program. The first is to give students an opportunity to find out whether Arabic is something they want to pursue in depth at a later time,” said Peter Merrill, Head of the World Languages Department. Presently, a limited number of colleges offer Arabic, and few offer long-term, extensive Arabic programs. If a student chooses to take Arabic in college, it often counts as a double course due to the level of difficulty. If a student does poorly or decides that Arabic is not of interest, the class is half of a freshman course-load, there may not be an option to discontinue the course. The one-term introductory Arabic course will “allow students to know what they’re getting into later on and prevent them from leaping in too casually,” said Merrill. The second goal of the course is to provide students with a broad, well-rounded introduction to the Middle East—in history, religion and language. “The sequence of courses will give a much broader introduction to the history and culture of the region than a one-year language course would,” said Merrill. “Even if a student stops Arabic after the one term course, he or she will still have had the intellectual framework, and will probably retain basic tourist Arabic, which is still useful.” The Language Department has long discussed the possibility of adding Arabic, but serious discussion began last year. Merrill recognizes that certain languages go in and out of fashion, but there have been constant requests and persistent student interest in recent years. Young Arab and American Leaders at Andover (YAALA) was founded through an Abbot Grant and basic conversational Arabic language and the alphabet was taught to a group of ten to fifteen students by Fahad Missmar ’06. The club held several functions including Andover’s first Arab Awareness Day in September 2005. The day concentrated on Pluralism and Islam and included a speaker and Arab-themed meal at Commons. Merrill said that following 9/11, America has come to recognize the vast national shortage of professionals skilled in Arabic. At national meetings for language educators, the scarcity of Arabic courses available to students is discussed as a major problem in the face of a glaring national need. Students feel similarly. “I expressed strong interest because of my sense that Arabic is an increasingly essential language. In fact, in our modern age Arabic is as instrumental as Russian was during the Cold War. It’s visible in sheer numbers today that the United States lacks the necessary translators, State Dept. officers, etc. to communicate in Arabic,” said Alexander Heffner ’08. While currently there are no plans to expand the program to cover multiple years of Arabic language study, Merrill does not rule the possibility out. “This is an open-ended experiment. To have a ten-year plan for the program is suicidal—the world is always changing and student interest is always changing; we’ll see what happens.” One concern is the lack of extensive Arabic language courses at colleges—meaning students who begin learning the language in high school may not have an option to continue it at high levels later on. Arabic classes are even more unusual in high schools and therefore there is only a narrow spectrum of textbooks and learning materials available. Another matter of concern is the number of existing Arabic teachers. The teacher of the one-term Arabic class has yet to be hired. The Language Department will most likely appoint an applicant this summer. The teacher may be an Arabic teacher at a nearby university who teaches the class during the Spring Term as a part-time faculty member. In the future, other one-term language courses may be offered. One possibility is to teach Portuguese as part of a sequence of Latin American history and Brazilian studies. But for now, students are excited for the addition of Arabic, and enrollment is expected to be high.
