An 8th grade girl attending a charter school in Malden, Massachusetts, was handed a “School Uniform Compliance Form” by a teacher for wearing a Muslim headscarf.
The teacher at Mystic Valley Regional Charter School (photo below) misspelled “hijab” as “jihab,” NBC News reported (see story here).
No matter what the school’s dress code is, the girl is innocent, because at no time did she wear a “jihab” at the school, as the teacher claimed.
But there’s a larger issue here: How good is a school whose teachers can’t spell?
Bear with me, I’m not finished with them yet, I’m gonna rub it in even more. The school’s website says (here), “The Mission of the Mystic Valley Regional Charter School is to provide the opportunity of a world class education characterized by a well-mannered, disciplined and structured academic climate.” Shouldn’t that say “opportunity for,” not “opportunity of”? Somebody there needs to look up proper usage. How “world class” is a school where “f-o-r” is spelled “o-f”?
As for the girl, “The Massachusetts chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations says its lawyers are representing the student’s family and are investigating the situation,” NBC News says. Yes, shove their discriminatory behavior up their anal orifices. They’ve got it coming. This isn’t this school’s only run-in with discrimination; they inspired passage of a state law protecting black students’ hairstyles (for details, read the NBC News story).
But their behavior isn’t surprising, when viewed in light of this blurb on their website’s homepage: “Central to Mystic Valley’s academic environment is the incorporation of selected core virtues and the fundamental ideals of our American Culture, which are embodied in the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution.” You know what comes to my mind when I read this? To me, it evokes the Indian boarding schools where Native American kids were forced to become “American.”
Don’t like government telling taxpayer-funded charter schools what to do? Then here’s an idea: Stop using public money to fund charter schools. If they’re privately funded, they can do whatever they want.
Related story: A private school in Utah that specializes in teaching ESL fired a teacher for explaining “homophones” to students (definition here); read that story here.
