|
Aussies want to compete with madrassahs...
Australia plans to use aid as a weapon in the war on terrorism, notably by promoting state education in areas of Asia where allegedly, some Islamic religious schools are breeding radicalism, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said Wednesday, October 30. Downer said talks between Australian and U.S. officials at an Asia-Pacific summit in Mexico and then in Washington this week raised the need to âbetter focusâ aid programs to help fight terrorism, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported. âWe could focus more effectively on education to ensure that state-based education is of a higher and better quality and more readily available in countries in the region so that thereâs less need to resort to religion-based schools,â Downer told ABC radio from Washington. Damned good idea. The only problem there is that, given the current state of the American education establishment, we might well go from having religious schools educate anti-American lunatics to having government-sponsored schools educate anti-American lunatics. I hope they don't recruit or train the teachers that'll run them in Berkeley or Chapel Hill... Both the United States and Australia, he said, were concerned that at some Islamic schools in Asia and the Pacific, âextremist doctrines are taught and people are recruited into radical groups. Issues like that are sophisticated points but we need to start focusing on (them) increasingly.â What's "sophisticated" about it? You get 'em young, you can teach 'em what you want. Even without a 100 percent success rate, you've still got a lot of cannon fodder ready to blow on command. That's about as sophisticated as a punch in the gut... Posted by: Fred Pruitt 2002-10-30 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=7604 |