A Stake in the Land Part 19

There were cases where among the membership of a German-language church there were Bohemians or Scandinavians or Poles. To the writer's question whether services for these people were conducted in their mother tongue, the answer was usually given in the negative, with the explanation that there was no money to engage additional preachers and that these people understood German well. The only explanation of such extreme claims for foreign-language services is the nationalism of the clergy.

OPPOSITION TO "INTERFAITH" MARRIAGES

Certain church authorities hinder amalgamation of the immigrants by making severe requirements in regard to "interfaith" marriages. For instance, in a case where one party is Catholic and the other is not, the Catholic Church requires a written sworn statement from both parties in regard to certain conditions which they must fulfill in their married life. What these conditions are the following blank given to the writer by a Catholic bishop shows:

In Casu Disparitatis Cultus.

Vel Mixtae Religionis.

FORM OF PROMISE TO BE SIGNED BY THE NON-CATHOLIC PARTY.

AGREEMENT

I, the undersigned, never baptized (baptized in the ..........

Church), of .......... do hereby promise that if ..........

receives from the Bishop a dispensation to marry me, I will never by word or act interfere with .......... faith in the Catholic Church or with .......... practice thereof, and that I will not prevent the children of either s.e.x to be born (and already born) from being baptized and brought up in the faith and practice of the Catholic Church. I also promise that in the solemnization of my marriage, there shall be only the Catholic Ceremony.

Signed in presence of

Date .........................

FORM OF PROMISE TO BE SIGNED BY THE CATHOLIC PARTY.

I, the undersigned, of .........., a Catholic, wishing to marry .........., unbaptized (baptized in the .......... Church), do hereby promise that, if the Bishop finds canonical cause for granting me a dispensation, I will have all my children baptized and reared in the Catholic Church, and that I will practice my Religion faithfully and do all I can, especially by prayer, example, and the frequentation of the Sacraments, to bring about the conversion of my consort.

Signed in presence of

Date .........................

There is no question that such requirements may prevent a number of marriages between native born and immigrants, when one is a Catholic and the other a non-Catholic. It is not always possible for a non-Catholic to follow the required conditions and as a result family quarrels and the disruption of families may occur. The writer has observed three such cases. In one case there were involved a native and an immigrant, and in two cases immigrants alone.

A similar ban or check on interfaith, which often means international, marriages is found among sectarian immigrant groups. Their extreme religious sentiment prevents them from marrying outsiders, and as a result inbreeding occurs. They marry close relatives and defectives. For instance, near Lincoln, Nebraska, where a small German colony of Mennonites is settled, the birth of idiots and otherwise defective children was so noticeable that the colony's leaders and their neighbors decided to bring about a change. The marriage of close relatives was prohibited and the ban on marriage with outsiders was done away with.

This change has had a very good result, according to the colony's leaders. The change was possible only because the sectarian beliefs had been weakened under the pressure of the general American conditions.

The orthodox Jews are similarly opposed to the marriage of their members with the Gentiles. So far as the writer has learned, they do not require signed promises. They are uncompromising in such matters and ostracize any one of their members who marries an outsider.

The usual explanation of the need of such a ban or check on interfaith marriages is that if the parents are of different faiths the children will be lost to the Church. Whatever the explanation or justification of the Church opposition to interfaith marriages, it often applies to immigrants and makes for their continued separation from America.

IMMIGRANT PASTORS

Very often the priests and pastors of the immigrant churches are freshly arrived immigrants themselves. They scarcely speak English and know little about America. Consequently they are not able to educate the members of their congregations in American ways. On the contrary, they tend to criticize America and favor their old country in their sermons, public addresses, and activities. During recent years quite a number of such church heads have been prosecuted in the courts for their seditious utterances and activities.

Testimony given at the hearing before the state Americanization Committee in Lincoln, Nebraska, showed how many of the ministers know little of the English language and little of America:

Joseph G. Votava of Omaha, representing the Bohemians, Roman Catholic, stated:

A great many of the ministers have come from foreign churches and countries, and if you gentlemen were forced to listen to them making English sermons, I don't know whether you would go to church very often or not.

Rev. F. E. Pomp, Omaha, representing the Swedish Evangelical Mission a.s.sociation of Nebraska, said:

A great many of the ministers in our denomination were born in Sweden; some preach very well in English, but the majority, perhaps, of those born in Sweden cannot preach in the English language.

The statement of Rev. Matt W. Nemec, Wahoo, Nebraska, Bohemian Roman Catholic, was:

There are eight of these gentlemen who have come over here and are in training, and they cannot speak the English language fluently, and it would be a great hardship for them to come up before the young people who speak English very well and try to preach in English.

POTENTIAL POWERS FOR GOOD

An immigrant church can do much toward the amalgamation of its members.

There are a few immigrant churches, Catholic as well as Protestant, which are doing valuable work in this direction. But while an immigrant church can do much good it also can do much harm when its services and activities are conducted in the spirit of preference of the old country to America. To prevent such harm some action must be taken by the public.

The writer recommends that the immigrant church heads (priests, pastors, ministers, rabbis, and others) should be American citizens either by birth or by naturalization. Foreign-language services should be conducted for freshly arrived immigrants only, and for those old-time immigrants who have not mastered English.

Immigrant churches should be required to report regularly on the Americanization progress of their congregations (number of families, home language, service language, naturalization, etc.) to the state or Federal Bureau of Education.

XI

THE PUBLIC SCHOOL

The preceding three chapters show how important is the public school as an instrumentality of Americanization. The question is whether the rural public school meets present-day requirements. Field investigations and search through both public and private reports have convinced the writer that the rural public school is the most neglected cla.s.s of all the educational inst.i.tutions in the country. It is far behind the times. It not only does not adequately meet the problem of immigrant children, but it does not even root out illiteracy from the rural population in general. Some of its limiting features are inevitable, while others are gradually being changed.

LIMITATIONS OF THE ONE-TEACHER SCHOOL

The great majority of rural public schools are one-teacher schools. The Commissioner of Public Education of California stated that there were in the state of California in 1918, 2,300 one-room public schools and 410 two-room schools. Over a third of all the Wisconsin school children, city as well as country, and 42 per cent of the Wisconsin school-teachers, are found in the one-teacher country schools.[31] A report on school conditions in Arizona shows that 149 rural schools, or 70 per cent of a total of 214 reporting, are one-teacher schools.[32]

The one-teacher school usually means a crowd of children of various grades taught by one teacher during the same day. In most cases the recitation work can go on only with one grade at a time, while the other grades have to do study work. Without the supervision of the teacher, this is much less efficient than the recitation work. About two thirds of the rural teachers answering questionnaires sent out by the United States Bureau of Education[33] instructed eight or more grades and held from twenty-two to thirty-five cla.s.ses a day, which means that the recitations averaged the absurdly short time of nine to thirteen minutes. A few teachers manage to lengthen the recitations by a system of organizing the grades into groups and of combining cla.s.ses, but this is the exception, not the rule.

As a rule the one-teacher schools have limited room and equipment. Most of these schools visited by the writer were small one-room frame buildings with porchlike attachments on which were built a tiny hall and dressing "rooms." Quite a few did not have even these "modern conveniences." The toilets are usually at a distance from the building and are not always kept clean.

Several teachers stated that the smallness and poverty of the schools have a depressing influence upon the teachers and prevent any great respect on the part of the people toward the school.

A third defect of the one-teacher school consists in its monotony and lack of color and variety as compared with larger schools. Rivalry is lacking and the recreation enterprises are limited. Of course, much depends upon the qualities of the individual teacher, but a good teacher does not stay long in a one-teacher school; she is attracted by better opportunities elsewhere.

Dissatisfaction with the one-teacher school the writer found to be quite general, even among the immigrant settlers. The Finnish settlers at Rudyard in upper Michigan expressed the wish that the government should give a better public-school system, although the existing schools were said to be standard schools. They wanted three or four-room schools, a better heating system, and higher salaries for teachers. Only in this way could better teaching forces be attracted and kept steadily in the same schools.

The Polish colonists in Posen, Michigan, explained that they have six one-room standard public schools in the colony and its vicinity, but that as the teacher has to deal at the same time with eight grades the efficiency of her work is naturally below what it should be. The settlers said that consolidation or enlargement of the schools is badly needed. No agricultural training is included in the school work.