The Schooling of Immigrants and Black Americans

There are a number of beliefs about the nature and accomplishments of American public schools which are almost sacred. Perhaps the most inviolable of all is that the public schools serve as the ladder by which any American child can, if he possesses the intelligence and fortitude, climb to success and acceptance in American society. While this belief has been challenged by revisionist educational historians of late, for instance by Colin Greer (The Great School Legend, Basic Books, 1972), it has maintained its hold on the American public in general and on some public educators in particular. The belief has its social consequences. For, if the urban immigrant child at the outset of the twentieth century could succeed by means of the public school, as some have asserted he did, why could not the black child of that same period or of the urban ghettos of the 1950s and 1960s? The conclusion drawn by some is inevitable-the black lacks either the intelligence or intestinal fortitude, or both. The purpose of this article is not to attempt to ascertain whether or not the public school as ladder to success is myth or reality. Rather, it is to describe, in brief fashion, some of the similarities and differences which existed in the urban environment in general and in the schools in particular which affected the education of the eastern and southern European immigrant child of 1890-1920, and that of the Blacks of that time who lived in the urban North, as well as that of the rural, southern black who migrated to American metropolitan areas in the East, Mideast, and West (which for convenience sake will be referred to as North) from 1940 to 1966. In the opinion of the writer, enough time has elapsed to make a reasoned comparison of the situation of the respective groups involved

Demographic economics · Economics · Geography · Immigration · Sociology · Demography · Diverse Education Studies and Reforms · Psychology