Early Efforts.

Most Americans at the turn of the new century believed as an article of faith that the nation's public schools could play a decisive role in helping to assimilate the new immigrants into America's social and political mainstream. This confidence was expressed by a New York City highschool principal, who proclaimed in 1902 that "Education will solve every problem of our national life, even that of assimilating our foreign element." However, faith and rhetoric notwithstanding, American schools did not make vigorous efforts to assimilate, or "Americanize," immigrant children in the first years of the new century, even though thousands of such children were entering the nation's schools. To be sure, school leaders in a few large eastern cities opened special night schools with classes in English, and in some locales, civics; but widespread efforts in this direction were simply...