Sandra Stotsky Describes Curriculum on Islam in America’s Schools
Posted on 10/1/2009
Sandra Stotsky, holder of an endowed chair in teacher quality at the University of Arkansas, spoke last month at a Sept. 11 seminar in Washington concerning the "Saudi Infiltration into the American Curriculum."
Organizers of the Dr. Miriam and Sheldon G. Adelson Policy Seminar Series sponsored by the Endowment for Middle East Truth invited Stotsky to speak at the second annual seminar. The endowment was established to examine the U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in which several Saudi nationals were perpetrators.
Stotsky, a former senior associate commissioner at the Massachusetts Department of Education, has conducted research into the information on Islam contained in textbooks, supplementary curriculum materials, and professional development workshops on Islamic history and culture. She found errors, misinformation, and other deficiencies in the material and in the outlines of lesson plans that teachers developed at the workshops, in part, she said, because supplementary resources do not have to be reviewed by textbook adoption panels and workshops and the lesson plans that teachers develop based on workshop material are not reviewed or monitored in detail by experts on the topic
Stotsky's recommendations to Congress included requiring the U.S. Department of Education to formulate specific criteria for funding and evaluating professional development on Islamic history and culture, and the states to formulate criteria for evaluating the academic content of instructional materials on Islam. One of the problematic sets of materials used in schools, such as Arab World Studies Notebook, is provided by the Middle East Policy Council and Arab World and Islamic Resources and School Services at a low cost to schools along with free workshops for teachers on how to use them, according to Stotsky.
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