vol. i, p. 1279.

[22] John P. Gavit, _Americans by Choice_ (in preparation).

[23] Minnesota Department of Education, Nineteenth Biennial Report,
1915-16, p. 84.

[24] Superintendent of Public Instruction, South Dakota, Report, 1916.
Report of Superintendent of Hanson County.

[25] Minnesota Department of Education, Nineteenth Biennial Report,
1915-16, p. 85.

IX

PRIVATE SCHOOLS

One of the greatest negative agencies, and in a large number of cases
consciously negative agencies, affecting the Americanization of immigrants
in our rural districts has been private schools. Among these--the writer
wishes to be entirely outspoken--the most conspicuous have been immigrant
Catholic and Lutheran parochial schools and Hebrew schools.

Many of them are run in the spirit of preference for the old country and
for the immigrant race or nationality to America and the American
nationality. Furthermore, the very spirit and aim of their methods are
foreign to America. In their training of children they lay special
stress on discipline, obedience, on the form of things, on punctuality,
on memory, and on mechanism. All these qualities have been desirable in
the "subjects" and in the small "subject nations," from the point of
view of the monarchical and aristocratic European regimes, with which
Catholicism and Lutheranism have been identified, or of the Talmud, upon
which extreme Hebrew nationalism is based.

The authorities of parochial schools, especially the higher authorities,
such as bishops, allow themselves to criticize sternly the American public
schools for looseness, too much freedom, lack of moral teachings, etc. A
prominent German Catholic bishop, who has been for thirty years in America
and who can hardly speak English, stated to the writer that the American
colleges, high schools, and even public schools are no good, that their aim
is to prepare children and students to get easier jobs, to get along in
life without labor and effort. Religious and moral teachings are entirely
lacking in his opinion and the schools work against these teachings.
Especially, the training of girls in America is entirely wrong. They are
not educated to be good housewives, but are just reared for an easy and
joyful life; in fact, girls are too lazy to do family work or any work. The
severely nationalistic churchman was unable to approve the democratic
spirit of the American public school with the stress which it lays upon
freed