Omaha Daily Bee Newspaper, May 8, 1910, Page 25

"3 PART TERRER HALF-TONE PAGES ONE TO YOUR, MAHA'S citizenship factory—that is, the public school sys- tem-—7,000 of foreign-born children, a congress of na- tional types, representing the strains which compose Omaha's povulation, are gathered in the schools. They come from the homes of the folk who are perhaps classed today as the proletarlat of the river bottoms, but who are tomorrow (3 he potent factors in all that governs the destiny of the country. s that school and the measure in which it accomplishes its mission lies a responsibility transcending the conventional conception of the function of the public school system. The children are taught the life of the new world, instilled with the spirit of the United States, then secondarily reading, writing and arithmetic. The potpouri of humanity within the walls of that little group of buildings which the teachers have come to call “Train university,” and the Cass street school is the making of the American blend. In the orderly seats of the class rooms Hans and Oscar and Lorenz and Antonio are to be found seated side by side. There are to be found ltalian, German, Dane, Swiss, Swede, Bohemian, Portuguese, Turk, Armenian and Eurasian From chart and primer they are learning the story of a life that is little akin to that of the lore of the fathers' firesides. They are forgetting the traditions of the old world for the song of Hiawatha and the legend of George Washington's hatchet. The fame of kaiser, czar and king is fading in the shadow of Theodore Roosevelt. “The child is father to the man” is an oft-repeated epigram which, if anywhere, finds its vindication in the life centering about these schools. All unconsciously the fathers and mothers of the little folk are learning the same lessons of citizenship over their shoulders. The school has become by this process the neucles of the community life, or, more accurately, the group of communities, which are each connected with the school by the slender but powerful strands of childhood. In the patches of the city’s fabric from which the classes of the schools in the foreign settlements are filled social interests are few; the school has no competitors in gaining its posi tion of assuming the dominating influence tablished is not to be lost. The problem which confronts the teachers at this school is a far different one from which the average class room presents. Many of the little tots that face their first day in school can speak no English and very little of their mother tongue. There is nothing American about them but. their future, which 18 yet to be developed The ordinary American child in all probablility starts to school with a!“ll a knowledge of his “letters” learned from the lips of mother or big sister. The American youngster, too, has behind him a bit of inherited aptitude for the things that he will come to deal with in the years of his school life. Not so with the majority of the for- eign-born youngsters of the river bottoms. The life of the type of home from which he and his forbears came in the threadbare strug gle for bread in crowded Europe had little time but for the pursuit of bread by hard labor. The teacher in the class room has at léast the assurance, however, of a clear field. The material to work upon is virgin in mental attitude. In that perhaps lies so much of the suc- cess that attends the efforts of the schools which deal so exclusively j*ith the foreign elements. Ohnrv! agree that only in the public schools is the problem 04 wated by¥he influx of forelgners to be solved. Immigration laws ran be passed and enforced ever so rigidly, but the problem would The influence now es- FOR ALL THE NEWS THE OMAHA BEE BEST IN THE WEST MORNIN( OMAHA'S CITIZENSHIP FACTORY AND ITS RAW MATERIAL Polyglot Public Schools, Where Mingle Children Sprung from All the Races of All the World, There to Be Worked Over Into Modern American Youngsters ) ATNDERGARTNaY YLA3E AT WORK remain. Through the public schools Americanization is plished in a single generation, or less. The most cosmopolitan of Omaha's polyglot schools is Pacific, where every nationality represented in the population s to be found Train school is a close second, while the Cuss street school has a large percentage of foreign children and children of foreign parent- age. At Cass street school the Russians are prominent among the foreign-born pupils; at Pacific school the Italians are the most numerous and at Train school there is a general admixture. Accu- rate figures are not to be had, but a conservative estimate places the number of pupils in the Omaha public school, which may be properly classified as “'foreign,” at 7,000. This is more than one-third of the total number of children enrolled in the public schools. A large number of other pupils are enrolled in private schools, but a much lower per cent of these are of foreign parentage. The result is that Omaha’s public schools are transforming thou sands of little aliens into American citizens every year. The teachers find the children of emmigrants the most interesting pupils in their clase rooms and as a class the most genuinely interested in their studies accom “When the children of these poor foreigners are sent to school it is at a sacrifice and for a purpose that the parents do not propose shall be wasted,” explained one teacher whose duty it is to preside over a Cass street school room where not a native-born American child is to be found ‘““Nowhere do we 'get more co-operation from the parents than in these schools in this part of the city They per. haps do not understand so well as the American parents, but they are in the most deadly earnest about it all. The child who is in school means not only an expense, but a reduction of the family's revenue by just the few dollars a week that the little one could earn if he were allowed to take up some ‘kid’ job. “Among these children of foreigners we have less delinquency and less tardiness than in the schools where the children represent other classes of citizens. Many of our pupils come from the families of poor European folk who can neither read nor write in their own language. These pupils in the event of absence of tardiness have to write their own excuses, such as are usually required of the parents. Sometimes in cases of doubt we trace these excuses back by investi gation and but seldom find that they were written for the purpose of covering up a day of ‘hookey.’ " In each of the schools where the foreign population of the city is so strongly represented there are regular staffs of interpreters. At the Cass street school a number of little boys from the class rooms are constantly being pressed into service by the teachers to act as interpreters at conferences with parents. This work particularly appeals to the bright younsters who as sume the dignity of being really useful in their semi-official capacity In these districts the schosl becomes far more than a school, The teacher becomes the temporal adviser of a clientele as large as the number of familles represented in her class room. The teacher must sit as the judge over families' dificulties, which are so often referred to her, and hand down opinions in the matters of tiny finance that the meager livelihood of the families of the poor present. The principal in these schools very often becomes the court of ap- peals. But last week a little tot whose parents came from the chestnut groves of the Appenines but a year ago wandered off into the city while her mother was distress and appeal w was busy with a wailing in *Little s made to a ieacher in the Cass street school who had visited the hovel where the struggling family lived. The interpreter was called into service. From this bright-eyed little Joseph it was learned that the baby was missing, that was all. Clecrly not a matter that comes within the scope of a school teacher’s trainin The text practice’’ contain nothing con- cerning the location of a baby lost in the industrial section of a bustling western city washing. There Italy.” Then an books on ‘‘theory and The teacher called on the police and in the meantime sent out a few of the older boys on a baby hunt. The boys went at it in great glee and in due time found the baby where she had cooingly en- sconsed herself in a cavern under a pile of junk iron. The baby, prop- erly enough, was taken in charge by the police until an officer could locate the distracted parents and restore the little one to her home When the boys brought back the word that her babyship had been taken in charge by the police more international troubles threatened. An indignant and frightened mother whose one idea of officers was synonymous with trouble had to be reassured and calmed again. Another task for the teacher and the interpreter. With the baby restored, the mother's demonstrative gratitude was almost as alarming as her grief had been Troubles to the teacher almost axiomatic down 55 street way, but the other districts have their share in it as well, Some weeks past death took away the father of a family of little children who had been kept in school by the efforts of both parents at the hardest of labor. There was neither money nor eredit to meet the cost of even the simple funeral that they must have. When the usually punctual children failed to appear the teachers knew that something was wrong and the home was visited. The household was found in the suffering of the grief of death and pov erty. A teacher’s money supplied the immediate wants of the family and pald for the humble funeral It was but an incident of the school life, for there the school is knitted closely into the fiber of the community. While little dificulty is met by the teachers in keeping their puplls in school to the completion of the eight grades, they find it hard to convince the poorer parents that it is worth while to send their children on to the high school. The introduction of manual training in the high school is said to have had a beneficial influence in this regard. The manual training courses in the grade schools have attracted hundreds of pupils. - That which gives the school a touch of utilitarian aspect makes it stronger with the foreign element. At Train school, while the manual training is lacking, there is much incorporated in the course that gives a material atmosphere. The garden clubs at Train school number most of the boys in the class rcoms. In a little triangle, fenced in with poultry netting to keep the fowls and goats which range the hilly neighborhood away, vegetables are planted by the youngsters under the direction of their teachers. The expenses of the gardens are defrayed from the pro- ceeds of the green goods produced. The teachers willing patrons of their student gardeners. The public library has come to the assistance of the educational work in these districts, A speclal list of books In foreign languages has become prove TRAIN S§CHOOL -TIAIN BULLDING 2N =N )1 117V 7 ' EonNI®72Z %) e has been prepared and delivered to the schools. 1n each school the children are encouraged in taking out library cards. The teachers sign the cards and are generally responsible for the good use of the books. Large numbers of works in German and Bohemian go into the homes of the river bottoms each month. Through the agency of the pupils many of the illiterate folks have learned to read in their native languages since establishing their homes in Omaha. National and racial differences are the most apparent in the highly interesting kindergarten departments, where the little one of 5 years of age is taken in charge. The school playrooms are busy places of song and games and play, but here and there the sugar- coated lesson 18 administered Train school is in the heart of the flood district, where with each threatening advance of the Missouri river many of the children's homes are surrounded by water. “Flood-bound” {s a common excuse at this school. The school {tself, scattered through four bulldings running up and down a big bluff overlooking the river, {8 a picturesque educa~ tional settlement. The teachers have come to call it “Train univer- sity” because of the pretentious campus. “I once thought that it was time to lock the gates of Castle Gar- den,” remarked Superintendent Davidson, discussing the foreign ele- ment in the schools. “That was after I had seen the crowded tene- ment distriets of New York and had ‘done’ Dow and Mulberry streets. Some years later 1 went back into the same territory and saw what they were doing in the schools there and changed my mind. Why, those young foreigners know more about American history and care more about our most sacred traditions than our native-born boys and girls. With our people it {s a matter of coursé, with them it has all the charm of a new-found life. The work that they are doing in the New York schools is being done in every school in the country where economic conditions have brought in the foreign laborer and his children “Omaba can feel proud of the forelgners in foreign blood is welcome. its schools. The I can see no menace in the emmigrant. Give our public school system and he can be made into a mighty de- sirable American in one generation and by the next will be so com- pletely assimilated that the marks of his newness have disappeared. It is the constant fnfusion of new blood and new strains that is mak- ing our nation strong. ‘On the schools lies the burden of being the mill through which all this most excellent raw material for citizens s to be manufac- tured, or transformed into the finished produet.” ‘The city schools have grown a long way from School House." the ittle Red The growth of the school to meet the conditions presented by the establishment of great industrial centers has been by stages of evolution little known to those outside of the clai rooms. The word "school” to the ordinary man is likely to convey a picture of the school that k mself attended, or at most a very conventional idea of a place where boys and girls sit in long, prim rows while & teacher stands at a very somber blackboard with & long, severe-looking pointer. That is not the kind of a schoo! that is making citizens for Omaha out of the children of emigrants, nor is it the sort of school that stands for what the Omaha ides represents, \