This is a photograph of a one-room schoolhouse in the late 1800’s/ early 1900’s.
A couple of important aspects that hindered the success of immigrant children in school were: language barriers, their parent’s attitudes of education, and scarcity of money. Because of poor wages, entire families were usually put to work in the factories. Children as young as five years old worked in factories. This made it nearly impossible for parents to consider, much less devote time, their children’s schooling when each member of the family played a vital part in providing the money for food and other essentials. If an immigrant child was able to go to school there was always the problem of language. Although children can pick up on different languages faster than adults, as you can see by the above photo, teachers did not have special time they could devote to immigrant students who truly needed it. As the education system progressed, class rooms were eventually designed so that teachers could give a little extra time to students that needed it. There were also programs that were implemented in schools to help teach children and their parents how to speak English. According to my father, who immigrated from Sweden in the year 1958, education was a major problem. For one, he didn’t speak any English and was forced to learn by being in a classroom full of English speaking kids. He was 5 years old and was put in the same grade as his 7-year-old sister. This caused him to struggle through his elementary years as well in his high school years. Although it was hard, my father said that he thinks by putting non-English speaking kids into English speaking classrooms, the child will learn English faster and better than if he or she was put in a special classroom that spoke his or her language. At least it worked well for him and his siblings. Although immigrant children still tried and had hopes for an education, their dreams remained a never-ending challenge.




Personal interview by Kaitlin Ahlenius with Stig Ahlenius. April 6th , 2007


Cordasco, Francesco. 1976. Immigrant Children in American Schools. Fairfield, New Jersey: Augustus M. Kelley, Publishers.


For more information on education please visit:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education