Christina A. Ziegler-McPherson
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780813033617
- eISBN:
- 9780813039718
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813033617.003.0008
- Subject:
- History, Social History
Inspired in part by new federal funding for education after the war, New York, California, and Massachusetts expanded their immigrant education programs. Educational Americanization was a means by ...
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Inspired in part by new federal funding for education after the war, New York, California, and Massachusetts expanded their immigrant education programs. Educational Americanization was a means by which progressives tried to both professionalize and democratize education. However, as the Americanization movement lost momentum in the mid-1920s, the foreign born also felt less pressure to attend English language classes than they did immediately after the war. In addition, immigrants began demanding more diverse curricula than simply English and American civics and enrolled in other adult education courses to help them improve their socioeconomic status. An increase in federal and state government support for adult education provided opportunities for more citizens as well as aliens, and so had broader political and social appeal beyond Americanization. The other component to Americanization policy, social-environmental change, was also increasingly attacked, but by native-born Americans who objected to state interference in their businesses, property, and labor practices.Less
Inspired in part by new federal funding for education after the war, New York, California, and Massachusetts expanded their immigrant education programs. Educational Americanization was a means by which progressives tried to both professionalize and democratize education. However, as the Americanization movement lost momentum in the mid-1920s, the foreign born also felt less pressure to attend English language classes than they did immediately after the war. In addition, immigrants began demanding more diverse curricula than simply English and American civics and enrolled in other adult education courses to help them improve their socioeconomic status. An increase in federal and state government support for adult education provided opportunities for more citizens as well as aliens, and so had broader political and social appeal beyond Americanization. The other component to Americanization policy, social-environmental change, was also increasingly attacked, but by native-born Americans who objected to state interference in their businesses, property, and labor practices.
