In the matter of education, America fell far short in what should be
the strongest of all her institutions: the public school. A more
inadequate, incompetent method of teaching, as I look back over my
seven years of attendance at three different public schools, it is
difficult to conceive. If there is one thing that I, as a foreign-born
child, should have been carefully taught, it is the English language.
The individual effort to teach this, if effort there was, and I
remember none, was negligible. It was left for my father to teach me,
or for me to dig it out for myself. There was absolutely no indication
on the part of teacher or principal of responsibility for seeing that a
foreign-born boy should acquire the English language correctly. I was
taught as if I were American-born, and, of course, I was left dangling
in the air, with no conception of what I was trying to do.
My father worked with me evening after evening; I plunged my young mind
deep into the bewildering confusions of the language--and no one
realizes the confusions of the English language as does the
foreign-born--and got what I could through these joint efforts.
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