A new favorite blog of mine got me thinking.
the article that was referenced here is at :
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/10/education/10charter.html?_r=2&scp=1&sq=immigrant%20schools&st=cse
Have people forgotten the history of the tenements in the late 1800's in NYC? The immigrant children were only provided for if the Children's Aid Society stepped in. There was child labor in Dickensian orphanages, the Day Nurseries,and the still very much alive Fresh Air Fund would provide respite in the country during unbearable summer heat and the stench of human waste.
The controversial How the Other Half Lives by Jacob Riis is very interesting the St Martin's Press edition Editor Leviatin 1996 The Bedford Series in History and Culture. Today having lived both in NY born Italian Irish in Brooklyn and raised in New Hampshire as well I see charities today , 130 years later, who's volunteers take responsibility for educating our immigrants. They depend on volunteers from the Literacy Project and Lutheran social services to obtain driver's licenses and pass the citizien's exams. Your grasp of the language is only as ghood as your educator. In the 1800's the kids went to shine shoes or sew and launder clothes and hang them in the steets for pennies to feed their sometimes over 10 siblings with. Today, children are subjected to No Child Left Behind Or ( no child left a dime) .... If we do not have enough teacher aids for special education and funding what priority will placed on immigrant students?
Today I think we have similar problems with the obvious improvements of industrialization and technology, but not with our command of the language. Who determines what a reading level is if it is acceptable that our soon to be former President can massacare it all while being married to a teacher and librarian?
on
http://mr-verb.blogspot.com/2009/01/immigration-and-schools.html
