Americanization by Schooling

Social and Historical Context

Johnson reports that some 35 million immigrants entered the United States between 1815 and 1915. Until the turn of the 20th century, the vast majority of these immigrants were German. Terrence Wiley documents that between 1870 and 1900, 2.8 million Germans immigrated to the United States, a number that fell dramatically in the first years of the new century. However, Johnson writes, there was a significant shift in immigration after 1885, as more people migrated from southern and eastern Europe. He also reminds us that immigration to the western United States increased at this time as people from Mexico and East Asia relocated in significant numbers. Bernard Weiss documents that immigrants to the East Coast were predominantly from Italy, Russia, Austria-Hungary, and the Balkans; and, in contrast to previous waves of immigrants, most who entered the United States after 1885 were Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, or Jewish. By 1900, this wave of immigration grew to 1 million people per year.

In addition to the shift in immigration patterns, the United States was undergoing an important transformation caused by rapid urbanization and the industrialization of the economy. Weiss maintains that among the most profound effects of this transformation was the reconceptualization of formal schooling. Past generations had considered education primarily a project of self-improvement. However, by the turn of the 20th century, formal schooling was increasingly seen as serving the needs of the community, particularly as an institution that could contribute to the solution of social problems. Not only would public schools produce workers equipped with the skills required by an industrial, urban economy, they would also provide a common experience for the considerable ethnic, linguistic, and religious diversity of immigrant children and shape them into responsible citizens. To underscore the scope of the challenge, Weiss cites a U.S. Immigration Commission report claiming that “in 1909, 57.8 percent of the children in the schools of the nation's thirty-seven largest cities were of foreign-born parentage. In New York City, the percentage was 71.5, in Chicago 67.3, and in San Francisco it was 57.8” (p. xiii). Educators, politicians, and social critics of all ideological persuasions placed great expectations on schools to forge one society out of many peoples and traditions.

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