Language-Specific Charter School to Open in New Jersey

A Hebrew-language charter school is set to open this fall in New Jersey. Unlike the California “Hebrew-language” charter I recently wrote about, the New Jersey school will focus on … Hebrew. That’s right, the school has permission to specialize in one language. Here, its website lists some reasons to study Hebrew, such as gaining an advantage in international business and diplomacy. None of the reasons have anything to do with religion.

I hope the charter school approval process in Missouri will remain friendly to single-language charter schools, so that a school like the New Jersey charter would be welcome here. There are many languages besides Hebrew that could possibly be studied for their religious significance. Religious texts have been composed in Greek, Latin, and Arabic, to name a few — yet all of those languages are taught in public schools. It’s unfair to single out Hebrew or any of those languages as unsuitable for specialization, when students’ reasons for studying them are as varied as the words in a dictionary.