gn tongue.

3. Libraries:

A. Public:

(1) community or town.

(2) traveling.

(3) package.

(4) school.

B. Private:

(1) church.

(2) school.

Among these agencies the public school is the foremost in the
Americanization process. It directly influences the children and
through them their parents--the adult immigrants.

BRIDGING DIFFERENCES

An observer of the home life of immigrant families finds a marked
difference between the parents and the children who attend American
schools, as well as between the American-schooled children and their
European-schooled brothers and sisters. These differences lead often to
friction and dissension in the families, and though each difference may
be concerned with a trivial matter, yet in their entirety they represent
the variation of the American from the immigrant.

The writer once entered the home of a large Russian immigrant family
just when a quarrel between two sets of children was going on. The
European-trained children wanted the window shades rolled entirely up,
for the sake of more light, while their American-bred brothers and sisters
insisted that the shades be left halfway up, as the Americans have them.

Another illustration of these differences is found in the fact that the
immigrants are conservative in clinging to their old-country diet. The
first breach is usually occasioned by pie--the American national
dessert. The immigrant children learn about it and taste it in the
school cooking classes and also in the neighboring American families,
insisting that their mothers make it also. As a result the pie appears
on the immigrant table, though in the poorer families only on holidays.

In the case of language, the parents and their European-schooled
children continue to speak at home their old-country tongue and read
newspapers and books in the same language. The American-schooled
children prefer to speak English and read American newspapers and books,
taking a special pride in this. They answer their parents in English,
although the latter do not always understand English. They call
themselves Americans, in distinction from their European parents and
older brothers and sisters. "My father, mother, and older sisters are
Poles, but I am an American!" answered an American-born Polish boy of
about twelve years when asked about his nationality.

"How do you know that