This study examines the history and development of the “Arabic as a foreign language” (AFL) programme in Dearborn Public Schools (in Michigan, the United States) in its socio-cultural and political context. More specifically, this study examines the significance of Arabic to the Arab immigrant and ethnic community in Dearborn in particular, but with reference to meanings generated and associated to Arabic by non- Arabs in the same locale. Although this study addresses questions similar to research conducted on Arab Americans in light of anthropological and sociological theoretical constructs, it is, however, unique in examining education and Arabic pedagogy in Dearborn from an Arab American studies and an educational multi-cultural perspective, predicated on/and drawing from Edward Said’s critique of Orientalism, Paulo Freire’s ideas about education, and Henry Giroux’s concern with critical pedagogy. In the American mindscape, the "East" has been the theatre of the exotic, the setting of the Other from colonial times to the present. The Arab and Muslim East have been constructed to represent an opposite of American culture, values and life. Through the agency of conflation, Arab (and Muslim) Americans are accordingly lumped together with people from abroad, making for their status as permanent outsiders. Thus, if the American Self represents an ideal, the inhabitants of this oppositional world of Arabs and Islam (an Anti-world) represent an Anti-self. A source of fear and object of hate and prejudice, this Anti-self is the object of derision and anything connected with it (e.g. language, customs, religion, etc.) becomes suspect and is devalued by association. This document has two objectives: First, to present an historical account of this context, and, secondly, to shed light on how and why things that are associated with Arab Americans in Dearborn are devalued. This is achieved by addressing the developments of meanings (of actions and symbols) in their American context, and how they have shaped (and still shape) the local culture's depiction of and understanding of Arab (and Muslim) Americans. Therefore, Arab American issues of language, culture and societal interactions should be understood as constituting a stream of American life, which represent a dimension of the total American experience, past and present, that is best understood through the paradigm of American studies. Viewing this experience as a cultural whole rather than as a series of unrelated fragments (e.g. immigration waves and settlement patterns, religious and state affiliations, assimilation and preservation debates), Arab American culture and issues begin to shine through as an organic and holistic experience whose characteristics are shared with other groups, suggesting research on this community is equally generalisable to others. ii As an academic work, this document promotes an understanding of the Arab American experience from an interdisciplinary point of view through focusing on the phenomenon of language in the community with emphasis placed on the AFL experience at school. Therefore, it is a broadly-framed outlook that permits, in an introductory way, a view of the richness of the Arab American experience, particularly in Dearborn, Michigan, as part of the American experience. Data were collected using two surveys, one for AFL students at a high school, and another was administered to adults in the community—in Dearborn. In addition, an action-research-based effort, individual personal interviews and focus groups were conducted with stakeholders in the community: parents/community members, teachers/school personnel and students, utilising personal involvement in understanding and analysing the data. Also, the study referred to archival and documentary evidence available in the school system. Four hypotheses regarding importance/significance and utility of Arabic were offered and tested by means of qualitative, interpretive analysis. Findings included: (1) Arab Americans valued Arabic as an emblem of their community in Dearborn, suggesting its employment as an indicator of political empowerment. (2) Conversely, in the non-Arab community Arabic was observed as a mark of the Other, and an artefact of ethnic retrenchment and rejection of assimilation. (3) Interestingly, however, development of English language competence emerged as a major concern in the community, outweighing Arabic language preservation. (4) While, language maintenance efforts in the community were observed as minimal, especially at the organisational level, and support for such programmes was marginal to nil. (5) Additionally, Arabic, while not the object of a desire to master as a medium of communication, was observed to signify a special symbol of heritage for Arab American youth in the Dearborn community, who may have rejected their parents’ ideas about learning Arabic, but had developed their own. (6) What is more, Arab American youth were observed developing a viable hybridised identity, whose mainstay is being “Arabic”, despite the dominance of English and Euro-Anglo cultural norms. (7) At the institutional level, Arabic was observed devalued in the school setting due to its association with Arabs, Islam, Arab Americans, and immigration. (8) Moreover, relations between Arab Americans and non-Arab Americans in the school system seems to have been equally impacted by this process of devaluation, furthering the cause of stigmatisation, prejudice and racism.

In 1929, Henry Ford opened Greenfield Village, his outdoor history museum in Dearborn, Michigan. Fourteen years earlier, Ford announced that written history was bunk. The museum was designed to reshape the historical project by celebrating farmers and inventors in lieu of military heroes and politicians. Included among the structures were Thomas Edison’s Menlo Park Laboratory, Noah Webster’s home, and Ford’s Quadricycle shop. Ford used architecture and material culture to connect American progress to self-made manhood, middle-class domesticity, and the inventive spirit. Despite signs that the struggling automotive industry is responsible for Michigan’s economic decline, the site is popular--since 1976 over one million visitors have attended each year. This project examines this phenomenon, which exemplifies how publics often fail to link past and present in the same way that scholars do. The Village’s largely unexplored archives documenting its internal history are mined, along with primary and secondary sources on the histories of public history and the Detroit metropolitan-area. Chapter one studies the site’s construction and audiences during Ford’s presidency arguing that the populist public images of Ford and Edison mediated encounters with the Village. Chapter two links the site to the racial politics of the Detroit metro-area, which marked the Village as an alternative public space for whites. Chapter three draws on visitor surveys, to show how patrons’ worldviews were shaped by the politics of populistconservativism. Chapter four explains how the appointment of an academic as president ensured the addition of progressive historical narratives, but the site’s location in Dearborn impeded efforts to draw a larger African American audience. In the mid-1990s, the fifth chapter contends, administrators successfully sought new patrons by blending progressive history and entertainment. This project argues that the Village is popular because it articulates both visitors’ longing for an imagined past, and desires for alternative futures. It also proposes that representations of the past are understood not only through a study of their internal histories, but by placing them in the broader contexts of the economy, politics, and social relationships of the geographic area in which they are located. / text

Thesis (M.S. Ed.)--Bank Street College of Education, New York, 1998. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaf 145).

Thesis (M.H.S.A.)--University of Michigan, 1976.

Thesis (M.H.S.A.)--University of Michigan, 1976.

Thesis (M.H.S.A.)--University of Michigan, 1976.

Thesis (M.H.S.A.)--University of Michigan, 1976.