The united American : a magazine of good citizenchip., June 01, 1925, Page 15, Image 15

THE UNITED AMERICAN
JUNE 1925
Page Fifteen
The Educational Awakening in a Land Divided by Many Languages
By ROBERT G. DEMING, Director of State Department of Americanization, Hartford, Connecticut.
(Special for the United American)
TN OUR grandfathers’ time an illiterate was unusual.
In our fathers’ time an illiterate was a curiosity. At
the present time there are thousands of illiterates
everywhere.
Connecticut is typical of the states of the Atlantic
seaboard and of many states. Many years ago the
General Assembly agreed that' the children over sixteen
years of age should not be compelled to attend school.
Anyone who, after that age, could not read or write was
either a dullard, a sluggard, or a nit-wit. There were
only a few score in the state, but having boys in school
as big as the teacher was an “infernal nuisance”. Edu­
cation was “for the common good and general welfare—
for intelligent citizenship.” “Yessiree, we’ll pass that
law.” And it was.
Long years rolled by, a great World War was
fought, and the Educator Rip van Winkle rose to his
feet and staggered at what he saw. Where once had
been intelligence was illiteracy, where once had been an
American tongue under an American heaven now arose
a babel of strange unknown languages, and Little
Italies and Ghettos were everywhere. There were
enough illiterates over twenty-one years of age to out­
vote the combined votes of Maine, Pennsylvania,
Michigan, California and Alabama at the last election.
And this educated Rip van Winkle. Being wise beyond
his generation, he knew that an illiterate under the
definition of the U. S. Census Bureau was anyone over
ten years of age who was unable to write (his name)
in any language, not necessarily English.
Rip pulled himself together and began asking him­
self questions. Are these people here as potential citi­
zens? Of course, otherwise they are alienating Amer­
ica. If potential citizens, why don’t they go to school
to learn English, to learn to read and write ?
Perhaps no opportunity is offered them, perhaps
they don’t know of any such schools. Perhaps if
there are such schools they have found unsympa­
thetic and untrained teachers and an impracticable
course of study, childish methods. Perhaps there is no
money for such schools.
And good fellow that he was Rip started off in
a hurry on his crusade, muttering like many a good
schoolman who reads his Bible, “What does it behoove
a town to be 100% efficient in the education of its
children if it lose in its race for intelligent citizenship ?”
And this is what he found. That in many states
and communities the ideal of intelligent citizenship, of
an intelligent and literate community, had been lost
sight of in the annual school budget fight, in the esti­
mate on the number of children of school age. Children
were educated because they always had been educated.
School officials knew all about the subject but little of
the object of education. Like rowers lost at sea, with
stars and compass gone, they just rowed and rowed.
The “common good and general welfare” in Constitution
and Charter was forgotten and was no longer in gold
letters over each schoolroom door. Instead Rip thought
he saw “for the good of the individual”, and once he
thought he heard people say, “Let those who go to
school or who send children to school pay for it”. Ant
Rip shuddered, for he had had bad dreams enough to
know that that meant Democracy’s End.
And Rip began to talk to the National Education
Association and he said, “How many of you schoolmen
have seen oysters soaking in fresh water ?” And they
thought him mad. And he repeated it until answered,
and said, “Of course, so they could be eaten”. And
again he asked, “And which were more important, the
big oysters or the little oysters ?” And they, said, “All
were equally important. And Rip said, “Exactly—so
is education for citizenship among the children and
adults.” “And which,” said Rip, “is easier to get, a
college education or citizenship ?” And the great crowd
shouted “Citizenship.” “Yes,” said Rip, “and which is
more important?” And his words went far and sank
deep, and the crowd went home in silence and deep
thought.
And as he went through the land preaching the old
time gospel of his educational ideal that democracy de­
pends upon the diffusion of knowledge among all people
many followed him. And he preached that adult
elementary education was fundamentally educational,
that it required certain money, carefully trained and
certified teachers, practical courses of study, unusual
devices and methods,—but above all pupils. For it was
found that the more unlettered a man or woman was,
the more difficult was it to interest him or her in night
school. And all these same things applied to those il­
literate native born who had had their education denied.
And Rip found that a common language was a com­
mon bond, that those foreign born who learned of and
about America gave to America all they had while
those who held back were denied even the pursuit of
happiness and the sympathy of Americans who should
have helped them. And he found that the children in
the schools who had non-Einglish speaking parents were
retarded one full year at the end of the fifth year, and
he put that in figures before boards of finance and edu­
cation. And the argument of a saving cost rather than
an ideal seemed to have a peculiar appeal to certain
people.
And he found mothers in the homes, unhappy and
miserable, estranged from their American speaking
children and their husbands in the factories. And he
found un-American standards of living and un-Ameri­
can thoughts in many such homes, and many of the
names of such children, beyond parental control, he
found upon the front pages of the newspapers. And
the things they said were not complimentary.
And all these things Rip remembered and preached,
and finally the government at Washington heard him
and passed a law limiting immigration until that time
when the great infected areas of the body politic could
be eliminated and absorbed. And it was a great light
and a warning to the land that those who opposed the
passage of this National Law came from the states
where were those of foreign birth—with votes.
And slowly a light began to dawn in the land, an
, .
(Continued on Page Sixteen)