you are an American?"

"I was born here and I speak the American language."

In the Italian colony at Vineland, New Jersey, to give only one
instance, there was marked conflict between the children who went to the
public schools and their parents over the use of the Italian language.
The children wanted to speak English and some even refused to talk
Italian, though their parents wanted them to and tried to teach them.
The children commonly acted as interpreters between Americans and their
parents, especially their mothers. Unfortunately, they did not conceal
their contempt for the latter for failing to understand and use English.

Often such differences are so pronounced that the immigrant parents are
greatly grieved over the "estrangement" caused by the influence of the
American public schools. This dissatisfaction takes an especially acute
form among the sectarian immigrants. In San Francisco there are over four
hundred families of Russian sectarian peasants--Molochans, Jumpers, etc.
Their religion opposes war and military service, and on that account they
were exempted from the draft. Notwithstanding this, four or five of their
young boys volunteered, in spite of the opposition of their parents and of
the whole colony. When the writer visited the colony last year the
colonists were much agitated and upset. They openly cursed the American
schools and the city streets for ruining their boys spiritually. "If we
can't settle on land in the rural districts, then we have to get out of
America!" exclaimed the aged leader. In rural districts, they think, they
would be able to keep their children from going "astray." The street
influence is absent and the school-attendance law is not so severely
enforced as in the city, the immigrant leader believed.

In the Polish farming colony centered at South Deerfield, Massachusetts,
where the Polish children all attend the American public schools, the
children learn English quickly and prefer everything American to everything
Polish. The parents are very much distressed over losing their children as
Polish people. For this reason the parents stated that they were extremely
eager to establish their own Polish school where they could teach their
children the Polish language and Polish history. Only lack of money has so
far prevented the founding of such a parochial school.

PAROCHIAL SCHOOLS

When an immigrant group is planning either a parochial or some other
type of private sch