Page:The Bohemian Review, vol1, 1917.djvu/91



In 1912 Mayor Carter H. Harrison adoped the wise step in introducing the teaching of several modern languages into the Chicago high schools, whenever a sufficient number of pupils applied for instruction in any one of them. By this step the study of Bohemian, Norwegian, Swedish and Italian was introduced into the curriculum of Chicago secondary schools. There were many at the time, teachers, principals and those interested in the management of schools, who criticised this step, and occasional opposition is met with even now. The main argument of those opposed to this innovation is this: that each of the above mentioned languages is studied almost exclusively by children of Bohemian, Norwegian. Swedish, etc., parents, and that study of the father’s language stands in the way of the thorough Americanization of the child. I wish to refute this assertion and point out benefits derived from such study by our new generation.

The strongest argument against the fear of backward Americanization is the experience of the past five years. Right now we live in the most crucial time testing the genuineness of the American spirit of our generation. Children of German parents have almost without exception been taking up the study of German in the secondary schools; yet how few are the cases in which these young people have provel disloyal to the American flag in these days that for them are so difficult. In practically every case of disloyalty or treason the guilty people were born and raised in Germany, not in America.

That proves beyond all doubt that our American school system performs very efficiently its function of making good citizens of the children of immigrants. People of other nationalities were not subjected to this severe test, but no one can doubt that their offspring would stand such a trial at least as well.

There are many who imagine that the process of Americanization, the process of the melting pot as it has been called, consists in discarding and throwing away all the traditions, customs and national traits of character which the immigrant people have brought over with them from all parts of the world, in order to become here something that it not yet defined or crystallized. Every one realizes that the American is not Englishman in spite of the fact that our national and political life is so greatly derived from the English national and political life. It is not Scotch, neither is it Irish, although these two peoples also use the English language. Language alone does not create national life. The Irish are using the English language now, yet it is needless to point out that they have by no means become English. When I say that the American national life is not yet fully crystallized, as is for instance the French and Spanish national life, I do not wish to depreciate the value of American traditions. National life and feeling is the result of a long process and it is impossible to develop it, where there has been so much influx and change as in America. Endless streams of new blood were flowing in, each of a different type, often mutually antagonistic, and it is really one of the modern miracles of the power of democracy that these different peoples have mingled here so well. The fact, however, remains that the greatestf actor working for the Americanization of the newcomers has not been the tradition of Bunker Hill, but liberty, opportunity and happiness which the immigrant has come here to seek and which generally he has found here. The people coming in our days to develop the endless tracts of prairie in the Middle West, to work in mines and factories, to build our cities and towns must be accorded the same rights as the settlers who came over on the Mayflower and tilled the narrow strip of land along the Atlantic. They have the same rights as citizens and workers, and one of these rights is the right to contribute whatever treasure they possess toward the upbuilding of the American ideals of the present and the future. If the American nation will be the result of the blending of different nationalities, each contributing its share to the formation of national character, the result will be a stronger race. We know that the English national traits derived their strength from the mixture of the Celt, the Anglo-Saxon and the Norman, the French from the Gaul, the Roman and the Frank; history is full of similar examples.

The timber from which is fashioned national character is furnished only by the second and later generations. The immigrant himself is only a guest, whereas his children are here at home. Now these succeeding generations will be unable to contribute anything of their own to the build-