ANALYSIS: Terror casts doubts on domestic policies
By STEVE SAILER
UPI National Correspondent
Los Angeles, Dec. 9 (UPI) -- While it's become a truism that everything in
politics changed on Sept. 11, the full extent of the transformation remains
hazy. Domestic issues seemingly remote from the World Trade Center attacks
may eventually be affected by the reappraisals unleashed by the atrocities.
For example, have the terrorist attacks cast new doubts on bilingual
education, school vouchers, and faith-based initiatives?

Ron Unz is a Stephen Hawking-trained physicist turned software and public
policy entrepreneur. He mastermind the California and Arizona initiatives
that banned bilingual education in those states. He recently mused on the
diverging fate of the two educational issues since Sept. 11, "There are
obvious reasons that a national drive toward social cohesion and unity would
support requiring the teaching of English in public schools and weaken any
support for the socially-disintegrative impact of vouchers."

As for the President Bush-endorsed faith-based initiatives law, government
funding of Islamic institutions had already been unpopular among Americans
before Islamic terrorists struck. A Pew Research Center poll had found that
around 60 percent favored giving taxpayer money to Christian churches and
Jewish synagogues, but only 38 percent felt the same way about Muslim
mosques. Press reports of some Islamic holy men preaching jihad may not have
bolstered support for giving money to religious institutions.

These three policies are not normally seen as having much in common. Each is
backed by a different segment of the political spectrum. President Bush
strongly endorsed giving federal money to religious organizations for
charitable projects (although his program has gotten bogged down in
Congress).

Bilingual education is supported by teachers' unions and the multiculturalist
left, and is tolerated by most politicians, including the President.

School choice is a favorite cause of free-market conservatives to the right
of Bush.

Yet, Sept. 11's eruption of Islamic extremism has cast a new and potentially
unwelcome light on each.

Now that the value of national unity seems clearer than before Sept. 11, and
worries about the loyalty of some immigrants are rampant, the 30-year-old
experiment with public schools educating immigrants in their native languages
could come in for second thoughts.

Similarly, with the Western world alarmed by revelations of the global reach
and powerful impact of fundamentalist Muslim schools, the possibility that a
voucher system could funnel taxpayer dollars into mullah-run schools may make
vouchers an even tougher sell.

Finally, Osama bin Laden's fanaticism may be undermining the optimistic
assumption behind the faith-based initiatives effort: that all religious
faiths are equally benign. This poses a problem for backers of the build,
because for the government to fund some religious groups but not others would
open it up to lawsuits under anti-discrimination laws.

Britain may be a leading indicator of the political re-evaluations in store
for America. It has no tradition of the separation of church and state. Nor
did it ever follow the old American policy of aggressively assimilating
newcomers into the native culture. Therefore, the British state has been even
more enthusiastic than the American government in subsidizing immigrants'
religion, language, and culture.

Current British policies are not exactly the same as these three American
ideas, but they are fairly close substitutes.

Even before Sept. 11, Britain had begun to reassess its policy of
government-funded multiculturalism. Last summer a wave of race riots broke
out in the decayed northern English mill towns. Most of the mobs were made up
of British-born Muslim youths, the sons and grandsons of Pakistani and
Bangladeshi immigrants.

The estrangement and hostility of the Muslim youth were widely noted. Sarah
Lyall, a New York Times reporter investigating British Muslim attitudes,
received a rude reception. "Asked for a comment, a group of 20 or so [South]
Asian teenagers congregating in an all-Asian housing project several blocks
away shouted, 'Jews!' before making clear with a barrage of unprintable
remarks about Jews, and reporters, that no visitors were welcome."

The rioting was severe in Bradford, long celebrated as the shining model of
state-subsidized multiculturalism. Ray Honeyford, a former headmaster of a
middle school in Bradford, described the educational philosophy of the local
government when he worked there in 1980's. He believes these polices
contributed to the rioters' alienation.

"Children from different ethnic backgrounds would be given an education that
suited their own particular background," Honeyford recalled. "There would be
no attempt to persuade immigrants to adopt British ways. Schools for
Pakistanis, for example, would emphasize their own languages and culture, and
the religion of Islam. English history and traditions would not be
emphasized. Even the English language was, in this brave new world of
multiculturalism, to be downgraded."

Then Sept. 11 happened. Perhaps even more shocking to Britons, however, was
what occurred soon after. Scores of Muslim British subjects treasonously
jetted east to fight for the Taliban against their own country. A number have
been reported killed by bombs dropped by the Anglo-American alliance.

This has caused a backlash against Prime Minister Tony Blair's plan to
greatly increase the number of state-funded "faith schools" run by religious
groups. While Westminster has paid for supplementary religious education for
some time, the Labor government had become enthusiastic about fully
subsidizing new religious schools, especially for the fast-growing
non-Christian denominations. Yusuf Islam, the former pop singer known as Cat
Stevens, set up one of the first such academies, the Islamia Primary School
of Brent.

In reaction, Labor Member of Parliament Tony Wright told the Commons on Nov.
21 that the events of Sept. 11 made it imperative to end the expansion of
faith schools because Britain didn't need more segregation by religion.
Wright said, "Before September 11 it looked like a bad idea; it now looks
like a mad idea."

Lord Alli, a South Asian TV mogul and Labor-appointed peer, commented,
"Anything which encourages isolation and segregation in communities through
education - where people usually have the chance to learn about co-existence
- is a recipe for disaster."

Even the blind Home Secretary David Blunkett, who had been Blair's point man
in creating new sectarian schools, admitted he was now uncertain. "Should we
have ethnically divided schools, can we have faith schools for Islamic and
Sikh communities and Hindus when we gave them for Jewish and Christian
denominations? I plead guilty to the contradictions and schizophrenias ...
that we're all faced with."

American defenders of school vouchers deride fears that extremists could
hijack taxpayer-supported schools.

Lance T. Izumi, Director of the Center for School Reform at the Pacific
Research Institute for Public Policy, responded, "Just as there are Christian
and Jewish schools, there is no reason why American Muslim parents shouldn't
have the choice to send their children to Muslim schools."

He did not find this worrisome. "Muslim schools in America, however, could
not resemble the radical fundamentalist Muslim schools in Pakistan and other
countries. In the foreign schools, the entire focus is on studying the Koran,
to the exclusion of other subjects. U.S. requirements for a balanced
education that include the major core academic subjects would help prevent
the establishment of radical fundamentalist schools."

David Boaz of the libertarian Cato Institute argued, "Meanwhile, we ought to
worry that the current government schools are doing a poor job of teaching
reading, a worse job of teaching history, and a truly terrible job of
teaching American values."

Indeed, American public schools have often been in the lead in promoting
cultural diversity over national unity. For example, bilingual education is
much more common in public schools than in existing private schools.

Unz is a Republican millionaire, yet he is sometimes impatient with
libertarianism. He strongly supports mass immigration, but believes it's
crucial to assimilate newcomers into the American culture by making them
fluent in English as soon after they enter school as possible. He also favors
the revival of the old-fashioned methods used to Americanize immigrant
children, such as New York City public schools served up successfully in the
early 20th Century.

Unz said that even before Sept. 11, the public has already largely made up
its mind on vouchers and bilingual education.

He noted ironically, "My national polling on "English" showed a significant
strengthening following Sept. 11. For years, the support/oppose margin for
English [versus bilingualism] has held almost absolutely steady at 77%-17%,
but after Sept. 11, it "jumped" to 82%-14%."

In contrast, Unz was disdainful of the hold that vouchers maintain on the
imaginations of free-market intellectuals and activists. "Over the last
decade or so, voucher advocates have spent approaching a billion dollars
promoting vouchers, and have lost nearly always nearly everywhere, usually by
40 point margins when such measures are put to a popular vote. For example,
in November 2000, voucher advocates spent around $35 million in California
and lost by 42 points, while voucher advocates spent close to $15 million in
Michigan (twice the union dollars on the other side) and lost by 39 points."

# # #

Steve Sailer
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