Serving the State, Humanity, and God:
American Schools and the Immigrant at the Turn of the 20th Century
Timothy M. Frusti, Ph.D.
The United States of America is a nation of immigrants. Those who were native to the
land prior to Columbus’s arrival have, in a large sense, disappeared from view and influence,
replaced by successive waves of immigrants from all points of the globe. The resulting nation is
a vast array of mixed and often conflicting cultures, languages, and belief systems. The necessity
of bringing this array together as one nation has brought with it a great confusion of purpose and
approaches. Some would work towards one common American culture, made strong by a unity
of shared values, beliefs, and goals. Others believe the nation and its people is best served by
encouraging and enabling each person, family, and community to continue in its own unique
cultural heritage, creating a nation unique in its rich diversity of experience, languages, and
values.
One of the great struggles presented by this dichotomy of views has been the search for a
manageable approach for incorporating each new wave of immigrants effectively into a political
and economic environment vastly different than what they had previously known. For better or
worse, this task of assimilation has generally fallen to the nation's schools, often by default, but
also, in many ways, by the active and enthusiastic choice of the educators.
The struggle to accomplish this task has never been more pronounced nor significant
than during the decades surrounding the start of the twentieth century. It was a time of great
confusion over the fundamental purpose and approach to assimilation. But in spite of that
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uncertainty, the nation's schools were called upon to find a new enthusiasm and purpose in
carrying out this awesome responsibility.
"With you it still rests either to make your teaching a work of hopeless drudgery or of
unlimited opportunity," was the challenge heard by the 1905 Annual Meeting of the National
Education Association (NEA). "Nowhere else is that opportunity so rich, so fruitful, and so soulsatisfying as in the community of aliens... Let us then give ourselves to the task of serving the
state, humanity, and God. Let us Americanize, according to the truest American standards, the
children and the home (NEA, 1905, p. 121)."
Sadly, it was a responsibility for which the schools were unprepared. With only scattered
exceptions, the beliefs and approaches brought to the task ensured that families would be divided
and damaged, communities would be undermined, and any hope for success would be doomed.
THE TASK
The numbers involved in the immigration of the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries were staggering. The development of railroad service into the heart of Europe and the
advent of inexpensive passage across the Atlantic, combined with ongoing economic and
political crises in Europe, led to a virtual flood of immigrants hoping to find in America
opportunities for a decent living in a peaceful land. Between 1890 and 1914, more than
seventeen million immigrants entered America, a number surpassing any other population
movement recorded by history. (Handlin, 1959, p. 12)
As this period began, immigration was still viewed by the nation in a positive light. The
country's developing industry base appeared capable of absorbing and utilizing an unlimited
amount of labor, and the expansion of the nation's borders seemed to offer unlimited space and
opportunity for settlement. As the period progressed, however, cries of alarm quickly began
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being heard. Because the jobs offered by industry were in the cities, the immigrants did not, by
and large, move out to the open spaces of the expanding borders but struggled to find housing
within cities which were becoming seriously overcrowded. By 1900, approximately 80% of the
population of New York City was either foreign-born or the children of immigrants. (Cardasco,
1976, p. 28) These immigrants generally had little money and so ended up in houses and areas of
the cities abandoned by previous owners as unfit for use as the new factories encroached upon
the neighborhoods. Even much of the new tenement housing built to accommodate the influx of
families was widely cited as inadequate and substandard, creating the slums and Ghettoes which
would soon be used as the basis from which to characterize the newcomers as innately filthy and
unworthy. (Brown, 1939, p. 599) Unable to speak the language, unprepared to understand the
economy and needs of industry, unfamiliar with the new challenges of urban life, and forced into
housing which failed to meet basic needs of sanitation, this new segment of the population was
quickly judged to be a threat by Americans, particularly since they seemed unwilling to change
their situation by embracing the American language and values. Fortunately, there appeared to
already be in place an institution capable of changing the situation for them: the public schools
which had been developing over the previous half century. The demand that the immigrants be
required to send their children to the schools quickly grew in intensity, both by the society in
general and by the nation’s educators, based on the conviction that the parents were not to be
trusted to the task. Marion Brown, a principal of a New Orleans normal school, told the 1900
NEA convention that for the immigrant children, the American environment is "so at variance
with previous experience and traditions that their parents are no longer to be depended upon for
safe guidance; hence our American schools must prepare progressed, however, cries of alarm
quickly began being heard. Because the jobs offered by industry were in the cities, the
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immigrants did not, by and large, move out to the open spaces of the expanding borders but
struggled to find housing within cities which were becoming seriously overcrowded. By 1900,
approximately 80% of the population of New York City was either foreign-born or the children
of immigrants! (Cardasco, 1976, p. 23) These immigrants generally had little money and so
ended up in houses and areas of the cities abandoned by previous owners as unfit for use as the
new factories encroached upon the neighborhoods. Even much of the new tenement housing built
to accommodate the influx of families was widely cited as inadequate and substandard, creating
the slums and Ghettoes which would soon he used as the basis from which to characterize the
newcomers as innately filthy and unworthy. (Brown, 1939, p. 599)
Unable to speak the language, unprepared to understand the economy and needs of
industry, unfamiliar with the new challenges of urban life, and forced into housing which failed
to meet basic needs of sanitation, this new segment of the population was quickly judged to be a
threat by Americans, particularly since they seemed unwilling to change their situation by
embracing the American language and values. Fortunately, there appeared to already be in place
an institution capable of changing the situation for them: the public schools which had been
developing over the previous half century.
The demand that the immigrants be required to send their children to the schools quickly
grew in intensity, both by the society in general and by the nation's educators, based on the
conviction that the parents were not to be trusted to the task. Marion Brown, a principal of a New
Orleans normal school, told the 1900 ma convention that for the immigrant children, the
American environment is “so at variance with previous experience and traditions that their
parents are no longer to be depended upon for safe guidance; hence our American schools must
prepare these children for the new conditions (NEA, 1900, p. 585)." Elwood Cubberly (1909)
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stated the distrust even more forcefully: "These people tend to... set up their own national
manners, customs and observances. Our task is to break up their groups and settlements, [and] to
assimilate... these people as a part of the can race (p. 16)."
The Compulsory Education Act of 1895 had begun to answer that demand, but the
results of that Act were mixed. Julia Richman, one of New York City’s district superintendents
of schools, expressed the educators' frustration as she said, "You must catch your boy before you
can keep him in school (NEA, 1905, p. 113)." The problem was the fact that, in the eyes of many
of the immigrant cultures of that period, sending children to school was counterproductive. The
immigrants from southern Italy, for example, were generally from peasant villages where schools
were only for the distrusted rich; for them to consider schooling for their children appeared
presumptuous and even silly. As Jane Addams pointed out, the peasant from southern Italy saw
that "the richest man in the... colony can neither read nor write (Adams 1902, in Cohen 1967, p.
219)." A common Italian proverb warned, "Do not make your child better than you are." In the
eyes of the parents, only the "bad" son or daughter would want to be in school rather than
working to help the family. (Glazer, 1963, p. 199)
THE NUMBERS
Yet, in spite of cultural indifference or resistance by many immigrants, and in spite of
woefully inadequate physical facilities for accommodating them, thousands upon thousands of
immigrant children did come to the schools of the cities. The United States Immigration
Commission reported that by 1909, over 71% of the New York City school district's students
were of foreign-born parents. In Chicago, it was over 67%, and in San Francisco, nearly 58%.
(Weiss, 1982, p. xiii) Overall, in the nation's thirty-seven largest cities, 57.8% of all students
were children of immigrants. The resulting demands upon school resources and teachers were
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staggering. One can hear a hint of panic in superintendent Richmann's report to the 1905 NEA
convention in which she described the "burden of assimilating the foreigner":
The immigrant child in our schools is the present problem... We must deal
with forty-eight thousand new immigrant children (between ages eight to
fourteen) annually. Adding to this number the sixteen thousand children of six
or seven, most of whom do, and all of whom should, attend school, we have
sixty-four thousand annually to be provided for. (NEA, 1905, p. 115)
A similar tone of alarm can be heard in a report to the NEA several years earlier by
normal school principal Brown:
One school in New York City reports 98 per cent of its pupils unable to speak
English on entering. Some years ago an emigrant ship unloaded one thousand
Italians at a New Orleans wharf; a few days later 250 children from this influx,
unable to speak a word of English, were admitted into the nearest public
school. (NEA, 1900, p. 585)
THE BELIEF ABOUT IMMIGRANTS
In addition to the challenges of mind-boggling numbers, the schools also faced a variety
of other fundamental difficulties which, in many ways, made their task nearly impossible. Chief
among these was a truly unfortunate stereotyping of the immigrant and his children.
Today's educators are quite aware of the effect which predetermined expectations
regarding students can have upon their achievement in school. Bearing that reality in mind, it is
not difficult to imagine the negative impact on classes expounded by educational leaders such as
normal school principal Brown:
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A schoolroom where the Latin race predominates is always noisier, and more
pervaded by a certain indefinable excitability, more subject to unexpected
outbursts of feeling... There is less inherent capacity for self- restraint, greater
difficulty in successful appeal to a desire for self- government - freedom
always means license. The Spanish child evinces a strong dislike to exertion in
any form, combined with frequent unreasoning obstinacy and pride. (NEA,
1900, p. 585)
Cubberly (1909) inclusively characterized the new immigrants in similarly negative
terms: "[They are] illiterate, docile, lacking in self-reliance and initiative, and not possessing the
Anglo-teutonic conceptions of law, order, and government (p. 16)." An editorial in the January
30, 1893, New York Times saw in the wave of immigrants "the least thrifty and prosperous
members of any European community (cited in Lubove, 1962, p. 53)."
Francis Walker, considered the leading authority in the field of Federal statistics of the
period, characterized the foreign-born as bringing "not only a vastly lower standard of living, but
too often an actual present incapacity even to understand the refinements of life and thought..."
"Only a small part of these newcomers can read," he claimed, "while the general intelligence of
the mass is even below what might be assumed from such a statement." He described their
homes as "mere sheds for human habitations, the gate unhung, the shutters flapping or falling,
green pools in the yard, babies and young children rolling about half naked... " They represented,
in his analysis, "the utterest failure of civilization,... the lowest degradation of human value..."
(Walker 1891, included in Handlin 1959, p. 73 - 4)."
IMMIGRANT IN THE SCHOOL
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These degrading sentiments were echoed to the country's educators in a rather strange
call to arms issued to the 1903 NEA convention by Richard Watson Gilder, editor of Century
magazine: "You know how the Italians are pouring in upon us," he told the teachers; "Dante's
and Michelangelo's countrymen ought to be worth working over into Americans, no matter how
troublesome the fresh material offered (NEA, 1903, p. 389)."
Based on these widely accepted, extremely negative views of the immigrant, the schools'
primary goal in educating him was obvious - change the "troublesome fresh material" into
Americans as quickly and completely as possible. The application of this philosophical approach
is apparent in the schools' pedagogical approach to this population: put the children into fully
American classrooms surrounded, as much as possible, by American students and taught by
American teachers. With occasional exceptions, little effort was made to specifically teach them
the language or find a way to make their transition into American classrooms or culture a smooth
one, and little thought was given to any possible value of helping them preserve at least a bit of
their unique cultural heritage.
This was true even among those whose views of the immigrant were more positive. One
author, stating a quite positive view of those coming to America, wrote: "These races bring with
them the most desirable qualities." But even with this positive viewpoint, he saw within any
effort by the various language groups to maintain their own newspapers and parochial schools a
great danger, declaring that these things, "obstruct native race assimilation" by allowing and
encouraging "class isolation (Grant 1912, included in Handlin 1967, p. 148)." The answer lay,
from nearly every viewpoint, with quick and complete Americanization of the immigrant.
This general failure of the schools to truly understand or respond to the needs of the
foreign-born student was decried by Edward Bok, a Dutch immigrant who arrived in America a
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decade before this period, but whose study of the schools at the turn of the century convinced
him that little had changed since his own introduction to American education:
The American public-school teacher was perhaps even less well equipped in
those days than she is today to meet the needs of two Dutch boys, who could
not understand a word she said, and who could only wonder what it was all
about... If there is one thing that I, as a foreign-born child, should have been
carefully taught, it is the English language. The individual effort to teach this,
if effort there was, and I remember none, was negligible... There was
absolutely no indication on the part of the teacher or principal of responsibility
for seeing that a foreign-born boy should acquire the English language
correctly. 1 was taught as if I were American-born, and of course, I was left
dangling in the air. (Bok 1921, excerpted in Cohen 1967, p. 2156-7)
Several of the districts within the New York City public school system did endeavor to
begin the immigrant's education with a cursory introduction to the English language. Gustave
Straubmiller, a superintendent of one of those districts, described to the NEA a method which
seemed "best fitted" to him: "The mother- tongue of the pupil is excluded from the classroom.
The instruction is oral and objective. Pupils learn by imitation... Translations into the mothertongue for the child, or vice versa... are out of the question (NEA, 1905, p. 418)."
Superintendent Julia Richmann, too, described an effort within her district to begin the
immigrant's education with special classes in English before moving into the regular classrooms.
However, this accommodation appears to have been provided somewhat grudgingly and only
with great care that it be brief, for "it is fatal to segregate foreigners [in a separate classroom] for
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any length of time; only by close association with American children and American influences
can a proper assimilation be hoped for (NEA, 1905, p. 116)."
The reality, however, of what actually happened in these efforts to provide special
instruction in English was described by a Chicago school principal, who responded to
Straubmiller's presentation by pointing out that "these children live chiefly in the crowded
sections of great cities, where overcrowded schoolrooms and half-day sessions prevail." Because
of this scenario, she argued, the "freedom in expression and the individual training which are
essential in teaching English" are replaced by "mass work" with much too large groups of
children. (NEA, 1905, p. 419)
Surprisingly, in spite of its overwhelming numbers of immigrant children, the New York
City public school system developed no city-wide system or policy to meet the special needs
presented by the immigrant child, a situation which historian Cardasco (1976) finds to be
representative of most city schools of the period. Decisions of how to teach or deal with the nonEnglish child was left entirely to the discretion of the individual superintendent, principal, or
teacher. The result very often was the classification of non-English speaking students as
"retarded" and the placement of all ages of such students into the lowest grades. In the New York
City schools in 1911, for example, third grade students ranged in age from five to eighteen years
old! (p. 29-31)
By and large, the schools of the time simply did not believe that any special educational
efforts or programs were necessary for these students. Richmann could see no reason not to place
the immigrant child with very minimal English into the regular classroom appropriate to his age,
since "he can get an English vocabulary in the fourth- or fifth- or sixth-year class as easily as in
the baby class (NEA, 1905, p. 116)." It is particularly telling that the 1904 convention of the
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NEA heard three essays on language-expression in the elementary grades, two essays on the
modification of high schools, four on the teaching of English in the high schools, and one
specifically dealing with the problem of "atypical children," with not a single word
acknowledging the mass of foreign-born, non-English speaking children who were so
overwhelming the country's urban schools. (NEA, 1904)
A VOICE OF CONCERN
Jane Addams was one of several voices who recognized the failures and called out
warnings about this counterproductive approach to Americanization. While she believed that the
public schools could and should be the "great savior of the immigrant district... the one agency
which inducts the children into the changed conditions of American life (Adams 1902, excerpted
in Cohen 1967, p. 2195)," she also believed that the schools were failing terribly to carry out the
opportunities which they held. She recognized clearly that the young foreigner faced unique
needs and challenges:
Whatever interest has come to the minds of his ancestors has come through
the use of their hands in the open air... Yet the first thing the boy must do when
he reaches [an American] school is to sit still... and he must learn to listen to
what is said to him, with all the perplexity of listening to a foreign tongue. He
does not find this very stimulating... (Addams, 1907, p. 186)
Addams contended that this dullness encountered by the immigrant at school was not
only a source of boredom but also a grave danger: "As his work grows dull and monotonous his
recreation must become more exciting and stimulating." This leads, she warned, to a fascination
with the "mysterious 'down town' whither the boy longs to go to sell papers and black boots, to
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attend theatres, and if possible to stay all night." Once a boy is caught into these excitements,
"nothing can save him (p. 187-8)."
An even greater danger which Addams warned against was the public schools' role in the
disintegration of immigrant families. In a presentation to the 1908 NEA convention, she raised
the accusation that the public school "in some way looses [the immigrant children] from the
authority and control of their parents, and tends to send them, without a sufficient rudder and
power of self-direction, into the perilous business of living." Addam's fear is a strong echo of an
1895 study among destitute women in San Francisco which was cited in sociologist Amos
Warner's classic sociology text, American Charities. The study revealed the extent to which the
problem Addams described did, in fact, extend:
One of the commonest results of immigration seems to be that the children
acquire a public school education, become prosperous, and rise in social
station; the old mother or father - foreign, uneducated, often vulgar, and
unpresentable - ...does not fit into the American life of the children. They are
therefore quietly thrown back into the almshouse. (Warner, 1908, p. 212)
The solution which Addams suggests for the problem was that schools must find a way
to help students "realize something of the beauty and charm of the language, the history, and the
traditions which their parents represent, ...to give to each child the beginnings of a culture so
wide and deep and universal that he can interpret his own parents and countrymen by a standard
which is world-wide and not provincial (NEA, 1908, p. 100)." This, of course, suggested a huge
new undertaking for the training of teachers, who would need a vastly wider understanding and
appreciation of the worlds and cultures from which her students or their parents had come. But
Addams also offered a simpler approach to introducing these foreign cultures into the schools:
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make use of the immigrant parents as educational and cultural resources within the classroom,
thereby giving the children "a chance to utilize the historic and industrial material which they see
about them" and, through the process, begin to give them "a sense of ease in America, a first
consciousness of being at home (p. 101)."
THE NEED TO REACH THE ADULTS
There was yet another significant failure brought about by the country's decision to rely
on its schools as its primary agency for assimilation of its immigrants. By both definition and
historical practice, the schools touched only the children; the adults were to remain lost to the
nation. For a time, this appeared to be only a minor concern, for many believed that the
"immigrant was a one generation problem," and were convinced that if the immigrant children
got a "good" education, the parents would be assimilated with them. (Cardasco, 1976, p. 36) The
continuing tide of immigration, however, soon revealed this to be a naive belief. If the
"immigrant problem' was to be solved, an agency must also be found to reach the adults. This
task, too, was laid upon the public schools. In an effort to meet this particular need, many efforts
at evening school for adults were made, but were found to be ineffective since work loads and
family responsibilities generally made it difficult or impossible for the targeted population to
attend. Current research reveals that the glowing numbers cited by many schools in reporting
their success with the program were highly inflated and misrepresentative. (See, for example,
John F. McClymer's analysis included in Weiss, 1982, p. 97-116.)
Superintendent Richmann urged her fellow educators to accept the task of reaching the
adults. In urging the NEA members to recognize their own roles in aggravating problems
surrounding the immigrant, she offered this challenge: "Let those who made the gulf build the
bridge to span it." Her suggestion for how to do so was straightforward: Americanize the parents
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as vigorously as the child. "If we have given to the child other, and let us hope better, standards,
then let us build a bridge between the Americanized child and its foreign parent, so that the
parent can cross the bridge to join the child on the American side (NEA, 1905, p. 120)."
One possible bridge to the adult immigrants which was encouraged to the nation's
schools shortly after the turn of the century was the kindergarten program. As Gilder (cited
above) spoke to the 1903 NEA convention, he pointed out several exciting possibilities available
through using the kindergarten to assimilate the foreigners. The first is the advantage of
"catching" them young: "You cannot catch your citizen too early in order to make him a good
citizen. The kindergarten age marks our earliest opportunity to catch the little Russian, the little
Italian, the little German, Pole, Syrian, and the rest and begin to make good American citizens of
them (NEA, 1903, p. 392)."
The second great opportunity offered by the kindergarten which Gilder cited was the
direct route it provided into the immigrant homes. As an example of how a kindergarten program
could impact the adult immigrant, Gilder pointed to the perceived lack of good hygiene practiced
by the immigrant classes: "The first thing learned [at kindergarten] is cleanliness. Both the child
and the mother soon learn that. In the case of the mother, lack of hygiene means lack of
knowledge; she is quick to learn [from her kindergartner] and to profit by her new knowledge."
Going even further, Gilder sees the kindergarten and its teachers as having positive impact into
the entire immigrant community, as they develop an "awakened spirit of helpfulness and
neighborliness among the mothers." In his view, the simple addition of a kindergarten program
to the cities' schools would build "a strong common interest that binds together socially many
antipathetic nationalities," eventually creating a "salutary effect" on "an imposing scale" by the
"molding of these masses." (p. 393-4)
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Yet another possibility for enabling the public schools to reach the adult immigrant was
voiced by John Dewey who recognized that "the assimilation of the younger can hardly be
complete or certain as long as the homes of the parents remain comparatively unaffected." The
problem comes, he sees, when the children are "too rapidly, I will not say Americanized, but too
rapidly de-nationalized; they lose the positive and conservative value of their own native
traditions," while not ever fully becoming initiated into their new country's customs. The result is
that they "are frequently left floating and unstable between the two (NEA, 1902, p. 377)." His
answer to the problem is the transformation of public schools into "social centers" for the entire
community, along the lines of Jane Addam's Hull House in Chicago. As such, they should
provide continuing education for adults, community recreation, and "numerous opportunities for
exchanging ideas and beliefs," and so would become "modes of bringing people together, of
doing away with barriers of caste, or class, or race, or type of experience (p. 381)."
REMNANTS OF A DREAM
The plans and challenges of utilizing the public schools as agencies to transform
America's rapidly diversifying population into a homogeneous and unified nation go back much
further than the decades surrounding the start of the twentieth century. They were part and parcel
of Horace Mann's original call for tax-supported common schools for all of America's children.
But these hopes and expectations were never more strenuously put to the test than during the
twenty-five years of the nation's third great wave of immigration, which began in the late 1800's.
Sadly, in many ways, those dreams were crushed under the sheer weight of the size of the task
and the diversity of ideas of how to undertake it, and the American immigrants of that period
were left stranded on the shores of an increasingly hostile land.
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But through it all, there were occasional voices of reason, imagination, and compassion
who dared imagine a better way: Jane Addams, John Dewey, even Julia Richmann in some ways.
It was an age struggling with a task for which it was ill-prepared, so perhaps its lack of success
can be viewed somewhat sympathetically. Ultimately, it was a struggle from which the schools,
teachers, and society of today can learn to shape our own better dreams and realities of what it
really means to be an American.
WORKS ClTED
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Reprinted by The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1964. A. F.
Scott, Ed.
Brown, F. J. and J.S. Roucek. (Eds.). (1939). Our racial and national minorities: Their
history, contributions, and present problems. New York: Prentice - Hall, Inc.
Cardasco, F. (1976). Immigrant children in American schools: A classified and
annotated bibliography with selected source documents. Fairfield NJ: Augustus M. Kelly,
Publishers.
Cohen, S. (Ed.). (1967). Education in the United States: A documentary history (5
Vols.). New York: Random House.
Cubberly, Ellwood P. (1909). Changing conceptions of education. Boston: Houghton
Mifflin.
Glazer, N. and D. P. Moynihan (1964). Beyond the melting pot: The Negroes, Puerto
Ricans, Jews, Italians, and Irish of New York City. Cambridge: The M.I.T. Press and Harvard
University Press.
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Hanalin, 0. (Ed.). (1959). Immigration as a factor in American history. (A sourcebook of
primary sources.) Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice - Hall, Inc.
Lubove, R. (1962). The progressive and the slums: Tenement house reform in New York
City, 1890 - 1917. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
National Education Association. (1900). Addresses and proceedings of the National
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Education Association: 1902. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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Education Association: 1903. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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Education Association: 1904. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
National Education Association. (1905). Addresses and proceedings of the National
Education Association: 1905. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
National Education Association. (1908). Addresses and proceedings of the ational
Education Association: 1908. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Warner, A. (1908). American charities. (2nd ed.). Reprinted by Transaction Publishers,
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Weiss, B. J. (Ed.). (1982). American education and the European immigrant: 1840 1940. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.
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