American public schooling and european immigrants in the early twentieth century: A post-revisionist synthesis

Abstract

Historians are important mythmakers.1 Among the central legends of American history is that of the immigrant and the school. The myth that-through schooling-early twentieth-century European immigrants to the United States were afforded and embraced unparalleled opportunities to achieve social mobility and to "become American," has shaped responses to persisting poverty among African Americans, informed contemporary education policy toward "English Language Learners," and, generally, stood as an object lesson for how success in America is available to all.2 Historians, as John Bodnar has observed, have contributed to that myth by depicting immigrants as "cherishing the idea of free public education and the promise it offered for social success," and as demonstrating a "‘commitment’ to the American dream of personal advancement through schooling."3.