the DC International Public Charter School (DCI)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As an oncologist, I can tell you that your arguments about the importance of Greek and Latin on modern medical practice is laughable. Moreover, as a PK, I can tell you first-hand of the contribution of ancient Hebrew to Western Civilization - for example the very concept of law derives from Hebrew. Hebrew, of course, has many more cognates that Yiddish, sounds like you need to brush up on your alphabet (a Hebrew cognate). In any case, I echo the concern for this strange preoccupation with picking on Sela. I am not pulling my daughter from Yu Ying for Sela, but I hope Sela goes forth and prospers. YY parents are familiar with such negative fixations by DCUM, but you all seem to have fallen of the mental cliff of late!

As an oncologist, can you tell me how many Hebrew words you come across in medicine, as opposed to how many Greek and Latin words? Hardly any Hebrew, but MOST medical terminology has Latin and Greek terminology. As for law, our system of law comes from British Common Law, which in turn goes back to Roman law. In the English courts, the language bases that were used were English (from the Saxons, which is Germanic) and the other French (from the Normans. and which is a Latin-based Romance language). Meanwhile, the most ancient documented origin of the concept of law itself goes back to the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi, which predates the Torah and Judaic laws by 500 years. FWIW, I'm not "picking on" Sela, I am a strong proponent of immersion and charters, and in fact I wish Sela success - I'm just questioning the pragmatics and relevance of Hebrew as opposed to other languages.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As an oncologist, I can tell you that your arguments about the importance of Greek and Latin on modern medical practice is laughable. Moreover, as a PK, I can tell you first-hand of the contribution of ancient Hebrew to Western Civilization - for example the very concept of law derives from Hebrew. Hebrew, of course, has many more cognates that Yiddish, sounds like you need to brush up on your alphabet (a Hebrew cognate). In any case, I echo the concern for this strange preoccupation with picking on Sela. I am not pulling my daughter from Yu Ying for Sela, but I hope Sela goes forth and prospers. YY parents are familiar with such negative fixations by DCUM, but you all seem to have fallen of the mental cliff of late!

Oncology - from New Latin onco- (“tumor”). from Ancient Greek ????? (onkos, “lump, mass, bulk”) + -logy (“study of”), from Ancient Greek ????? (logia), from ????? (logos, “word”).

Cheers!

[Anonymous]

DCUM evidently does not handle unicode text and transliterates foreign characters into question marks. onkos, and logos - both Greek.

[Anonymous]

^ "alphabet" comes from PHOENICIAN "aleph" and "beth" - and it is from the Phoenicians that our modern Alphabet derives. Phoenician is a semitic language similar to and related to Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic, but is not Hebrew per se.

[Anonymous]

Okay, so the point about relative importance of Greek/Latin vs. Hebrew has been made.

We now return you to our regularly scheduled programming.

[Anonymous]

As an oncologist, I can tell you that your arguments about the importance of Greek and Latin on modern medical practice is laughable. Moreover, as a PK, I can tell you first-hand of the contribution of ancient Hebrew to Western Civilization - for example the very concept of law derives from Hebrew. Hebrew, of course, has many more cognates that Yiddish, sounds like you need to brush up on your alphabet (a Hebrew cognate). In any case, I echo the concern for this strange preoccupation with picking on Sela. I am not pulling my daughter from Yu Ying for Sela, but I hope Sela goes forth and prospers. YY parents are familiar with such negative fixations by DCUM, but you all seem to have fallen of the mental cliff of late!

You do know, Dr, that SELA is a modern Hebrew immersion program, not an "ancient Hebrew" immersion school, right?

As for the PP all het up about immersion for immersion's sake, accusing anyone who doubts the usefulness of Hebrew language immersion of racism , check your facts. There are not 13+million modern Hebrew speakers. There are 7 million. Tops. Most of whom reside in Israel, where the dominant language of business is....English.

You want to line up for SELA, more power to you. But when your child struggles with the language and you realize they will never use it, don't complain and don't dare wish for another Spanish immersion program in its place.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

As an oncologist, I can tell you that your arguments about the importance of Greek and Latin on modern medical practice is laughable. Moreover, as a PK, I can tell you first-hand of the contribution of ancient Hebrew to Western Civilization - for example the very concept of law derives from Hebrew. Hebrew, of course, has many more cognates that Yiddish, sounds like you need to brush up on your alphabet (a Hebrew cognate). In any case, I echo the concern for this strange preoccupation with picking on Sela. I am not pulling my daughter from Yu Ying for Sela, but I hope Sela goes forth and prospers. YY parents are familiar with such negative fixations by DCUM, but you all seem to have fallen of the mental cliff of late!

You do know, Dr, that SELA is a modern Hebrew immersion program, not an "ancient Hebrew" immersion school, right?

As for the PP all het up about immersion for immersion's sake, accusing anyone who doubts the usefulness of Hebrew language immersion of racism , check your facts. There are not 13+million modern Hebrew speakers. There are 7 million. Tops. Most of whom reside in Israel, where the dominant language of business is....English.

You want to line up for SELA, more power to you. But when your child struggles with the language and you realize they will never use it, don't complain and don't dare wish for another Spanish immersion program in its place.

+100

SELA boosters, please come back in 5 years.

And, to the supposed oncologist (scary if that's the case) who attacked Greek & Latin while boosting Hebrew as the source of all Western law...please educate yourself (in any language you want to):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Hammurabi
http://www.dl.ket.org/latin3/mores/legallatin/legal01.htm

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Pp ignores the many benefits of language immersion that go far beyond practical usage of the language.

Very true, but in that case we want classic Greek and Latin way before Hebrew. Btw, if this is a thread about DCI, why don't sela boosters open their own thread?

And why do we want classical Greek before Hebrew and who is WE and who gets to decide "what serves DC"? I am not a Sela booster, just a woman of color who wants language options for my children. But I have to say there is more than a smack of racism and/or paternalism on DCUM. Upper middle class white folks spewing under the cloak of anonymity about what they feel the poor black children of DC want or need. And in my book, that's "disgusting." I want my children to go to a solid school where they have exposure to another language. I don't believe in the concept of inferior and superior languages. The need to constantly pick on Sela is most curious (more racism?). Modern Greek is spoken by about 12 million people, Hebrew by about 13+ million plus. Something tells me no one would be going after a Greek language charter. Charter schools are a function of the market. It's not the Charter School Board's to do market testing, it's their job to find well organized schools with a solid working model. If no parents are interested, nobody shows up, and the school doesn't happen. I had to wait a long time to get through the crowd at Sela's table where there were more parents with skin tones similar to mine holding up the line filling up applications. Some of you all need to do some soul-searching about why you think YOU get to decide what MY children, and children with less resources than my children, learn.

OK, you know how to write. Do you know how to read? The messages before yours had little to do with your diatribe. Point of this overall thread is: DCI just got approved. What does have to do with sela or any other charter not part of DCI now?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As an oncologist, I can tell you that your arguments about the importance of Greek and Latin on modern medical practice is laughable. Moreover, as a PK, I can tell you first-hand of the contribution of ancient Hebrew to Western Civilization - for example the very concept of law derives from Hebrew. Hebrew, of course, has many more cognates that Yiddish, sounds like you need to brush up on your alphabet (a Hebrew cognate). In any case, I echo the concern for this strange preoccupation with picking on Sela. I am not pulling my daughter from Yu Ying for Sela, but I hope Sela goes forth and prospers. YY parents are familiar with such negative fixations by DCUM, but you all seem to have fallen of the mental cliff of late!

Yes.

Yes on all counts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

As an oncologist, I can tell you that your arguments about the importance of Greek and Latin on modern medical practice is laughable. Moreover, as a PK, I can tell you first-hand of the contribution of ancient Hebrew to Western Civilization - for example the very concept of law derives from Hebrew. Hebrew, of course, has many more cognates that Yiddish, sounds like you need to brush up on your alphabet (a Hebrew cognate). In any case, I echo the concern for this strange preoccupation with picking on Sela. I am not pulling my daughter from Yu Ying for Sela, but I hope Sela goes forth and prospers. YY parents are familiar with such negative fixations by DCUM, but you all seem to have fallen of the mental cliff of late!

You do know, Dr, that SELA is a modern Hebrew immersion program, not an "ancient Hebrew" immersion school, right?

As for the PP all het up about immersion for immersion's sake, accusing anyone who doubts the usefulness of Hebrew language immersion of racism , check your facts. There are not 13+million modern Hebrew speakers. There are 7 million. Tops. Most of whom reside in Israel, where the dominant language of business is....English.

You want to line up for SELA, more power to you. But when your child struggles with the language and you realize they will never use it, don't complain and don't dare wish for another Spanish immersion program in its place.

+100

SELA boosters, please come back in 5 years.

And, to the supposed oncologist (scary if that's the case) who attacked Greek & Latin while boosting Hebrew as the source of all Western law...please educate yourself (in any language you want to):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Hammurabi
http://www.dl.ket.org/latin3/mores/legallatin/legal01.htm

Holy shit - how stupid are you??

You're offended by the idea of an oncologist who speaks Hebrew? Would you be similarly offended by a ballet dancer who speaks Russian?

You're a f*cking idiot.

Just go away. Contaminate yourself online elsewhere - perhaps where the Kardashians are admired, as opposed to reviled.

[Anonymous]

Please stop. Sela does not exist yet but someone, a booster, keeps bringing it up as a potential future member of DCI. I have no opinion about Hebrew but as a parent whose child attends a DCI feeder would much prefer my child knows Mandarin, Spanish and/or French over Hebrew. We are Jewish and our kid goes to Hebrew school to prepare for his bar mitzvah.

If Sela boosters want to discuss Sela, they should start their own thread instead of bringing it up in every thread about DCI which also does not exist yet but is in the planning stages.

If other language charters want to join DCI, it would make more sense to discuss other immersion charters like DC bilingual which offer Spanish. Course they don't insert themselves in every discussion about DCI.

[Anonymous]

Wow. I didn't see where anyone expressed offense at an oncologist speaking Hebrew, but it is offensive to see folks misstating facts about language, etymology and history.

I thought the point of talking schools was to promote education, fact-based learning and enlightenment. Evidently I was mistaken.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wow. I didn't see where anyone expressed offense at an oncologist speaking Hebrew, but it is offensive to see folks misstating facts about language, etymology and history.

I thought the point of talking schools was to promote education, fact-based learning and enlightenment. Evidently I was mistaken.

+1. Perhaps before talking bilingual Ed we should make sure every oncologist, perhaps every DCUM poster, can read English.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

As an oncologist, I can tell you that your arguments about the importance of Greek and Latin on modern medical practice is laughable. Moreover, as a PK, I can tell you first-hand of the contribution of ancient Hebrew to Western Civilization - for example the very concept of law derives from Hebrew. Hebrew, of course, has many more cognates that Yiddish, sounds like you need to brush up on your alphabet (a Hebrew cognate). In any case, I echo the concern for this strange preoccupation with picking on Sela. I am not pulling my daughter from Yu Ying for Sela, but I hope Sela goes forth and prospers. YY parents are familiar with such negative fixations by DCUM, but you all seem to have fallen of the mental cliff of late!

You do know, Dr, that SELA is a modern Hebrew immersion program, not an "ancient Hebrew" immersion school, right?

As for the PP all het up about immersion for immersion's sake, accusing anyone who doubts the usefulness of Hebrew language immersion of racism , check your facts. There are not 13+million modern Hebrew speakers. There are 7 million. Tops. Most of whom reside in Israel, where the dominant language of business is....English.

You want to line up for SELA, more power to you. But when your child struggles with the language and you realize they will never use it, don't complain and don't dare wish for another Spanish immersion program in its place.

+100

SELA boosters, please come back in 5 years.

And, to the supposed oncologist (scary if that's the case) who attacked Greek & Latin while boosting Hebrew as the source of all Western law...please educate yourself (in any language you want to):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Hammurabi
http://www.dl.ket.org/latin3/mores/legallatin/legal01.htm

Holy shit - how stupid are you??

You're offended by the idea of an oncologist who speaks Hebrew? Would you be similarly offended by a ballet dancer who speaks Russian?

You're a f*cking idiot.

Just go away. Contaminate yourself online elsewhere - perhaps where the Kardashians are admired, as opposed to reviled.

Wow. You just took the cake for most ridiculous, willfully ignorant post of the month (and we'll throw in posts from Dec too, since we're still early in Jan).

This poster said NOTHING about being offended that the (supposed) Oncologist speaks Hebrew. Before you twist your panties past the point of being able to breathe (and that goes whether you're a guy or a gal), maybe READ the post you're responding to before viciously and ridiculously accusing a PP of not reading.

You even take the cake from the "Don't tell us how great your charter schools are!" poster... unless you're the same person.

[Anonymous]

I enjoyed discussing DCI with Stokes, Yu Ying and LAMB at the Charter School Expo (didn't get around to discussing with Mundo Verde). While all except YY were understandably hesitant to discuss in terms of "definites", there is a lot of excitement all around.

It will be great to see how this idea grows and develops. In my fantasy world (which begins with my kids getting into one of the feeder schools as a start!), they would add other world languages such as Russian or Arabic. If kids who attend really do graduate fluent in 2 languages and conversational in at least one additional language, aside from all the great other benefits that come with bilingual education, they will have some serious options re: college study and employment.

Here's to hoping DCI succeeds, thrives, and changes the face of DC public education in a way that benefits all schools in DC.