The Fight for the Melting Pot
A Kennewick citizen demands the state abolish private schools to ensure all children are raised with a single, nationalist loyalty.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Editor Courier-Reporter: These days we hear much from many sources about making the world safe for democracy. Before we can do that we must make our own nation safe. Uncle Sam should abolish every private primary school in the land and require every child whose health will permit to attend some public school until he passes the eighth grade, and allow no tongue to be taught in any of these schools but good old U. S. A. The men and women who fit themselves to teach as a life vocation are surely public benefactors, but all over the land there are many immature, wishy-washy teachers who teach as a stepping stone to something else. Our form of government should be drilled into these would-be teachers until they are able to make one good Fourth of July oration a week to their pupils. If a foreigner doesn’t wish to put his kids in schools of that kind, let them stay on the other side of the pond. There is not a more dangerous propagandist in the United States than an ultra-German preacher who combines the office of preaching with that of teaching the lambs of his flock. It seems the people of the United States must soon vote to amend the constitution to clearly define the line where free speech and religious liberty must stop.
“To make a public think German it is necessary to make it speak German. The whole community is German to the core, reading nothing but German, speaking nothing but German.”
This 1918 letter to the editor reflects the intense anti-immigrant sentiment of the World War I era, when '100 percent Americanism' movements sought to eradicate foreign language and parochial education. Similar rhetoric regarding 'patriotism' in curricula continues to surface in contemporary school board debates, reflecting an enduring struggle over what the state should teach its children.
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