America and Canada; Immigration, Education and the New World.

 “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

(Emma Lazarus, The New Colossus, 1883, engraved at the base of the Statue of Liberty)

Immigrants at Ellis Island waiting to enter the U.S.A.

'Beloved youth of America, you are her hope and her honour!  But you cannot honour your country unless you early improve yourself in useful knowledge'
(P. Pickett, The Juvenile Expositor, or American School-Class Book.  New York, 1819)

The educational system in the American continent; America and Canada,, like the British, developed piecemeal in response to particular situations.  It began with aims and practices close to the British model where most children apart from the very poor (or, in the case of America, slaves) had the opportunity of basic elementary education at dame school, and, from the late 18th century, Sunday school, while many also had some further formal schooling.  The sons of gentlemen received a classical education on the European pattern as it had been established in Renaissance times.  A British traveller in the States in the 1820's noted, however, less concentration on the classics than in Britain:

'Classical learning may be perhaps too much neglected, though this is much better than the exclusive attention that is paid to it in the public schools of England'
(William Newnham Blane (1800-1825) An excursion through the United States and Canada during the years 1822-23 by an English gentleman, pub. 1824, p. 470 internet edition available at archive.org)

The American poet and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson  (1803-1882), for example, whose parents, though poor, were determined that their children should have the best possible education, started at dame school in 1806 at age three, and in 1813 went to Boston Latin school which prepared boys for Harvard College.  He wrote to his aunt:

'I hope I can say I study more than I did a little while ago.  I am in another book called Virgil...After attending this school,( until 11am) I resume my studies at the Latin School...'
In 1814 the boys all turned out to help throw up defences against the British army at Noddle's Island.
(James Elliot Cabot., A memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 2 vols, 1887, Vol. 1, p. 35 internet edition available at archive.org))

The sons of tradesmen generally received a more practical education either through apprenticeships or at small private schools teaching accountancy and other business skills.  Henry James (1843-1916) suffered for a time at one run by Messrs. Forest and Quakenboss.  This school was combined with a shop and gave a really good apprenticeship, not only offering practical experience but tuition as well, the only problem was that Henry James hated it.  He was sent when he was eleven, in 1854, and as an adult looked back on:
'ledgers, day-books, double-entry, tall pages of figures, inter spaces streaked with oblique ruled lines that weirdly "balanced" whatever that might mean, and other like horrors'
(Henry James, A small boy and others, 1913, p. 222, internet edition available, archive.org)

From Henry James, A Small Boy and Others
(archive.org)

However, during the 19th century the special educational needs of American children led to a steady re-shaping of their education.  There are detailed accounts of the development of the American educational system in Harry Good and James D. Teller's A History of American Education, 1973 and Fred and Grace Hechinger's Growing Up in America, 1975.

After the American War of Independence separated America from British government education was seen as an important means of uniting the diverse individual American states.  Education was also recognised as one of the essential pillars of a democracy in which all citizens are involved in decisions affecting their government and their future.  The ideas behind the French  Revolution had a considerable influence on the development of democracy and belief in equality in America, helping to prejudice many people against private fee-paying schools and towards a system of state education because this was felt to be more egalitarian.  Similar beliefs affected the 20th century development of British education, and in both systems there has been a constant tension between what was felt to be best for the majority and what private individuals feel is best for their children.  In America there was also inevitable ideological conflict concerning the equal rights of slaves, Native Americans, peoples from diverse ethnic backgrounds and women.

A typical American school room
(The Historic Present)

During the first half of the 19th century there was constant controversy over state control of education and the development of a unified, universal educational system in each state, as opposed to the piecemeal private and sectarian provision for schooling which had been the pattern.  Opposition to a unified system, and to universal education, was particularly strong in the more rural southern states because many people thought education simply unnecessary, as many farming communities did in Britain, and also were actively opposed to the actual principle that 'all men (and women) are created equal' and so to the equality of opportunity which education brings.

However, particularly in the more industrialised urban centres of the north, there was also a persistant demand for education both from and for the poorer sections of the community, since it was seen as key to improving their status and prospects.  In Philadelphia in 1829, for example, the city artisans and factory workers' unions asked for free and universal infant and elementary schools with local school boards elected by the people, and a school of manual labour in each county.  Horace Mann (1796-1859) influential Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education said that:
'nothing but Universal Education could prevent the exploitation of labour and the poor.'
(quoted in F. & G. Hechinger, op.cit p. 92)

State schools were encouraged by granting local districts the right to raise a tax for schools, and further promoting them through state aid, a system which came into general use in the U.S.A. long before equivalent measures were taken in Britain.

The second step towards a unified system of common schools, giving at least a basic education, was the centralisation of educational control in each state.  During the period of colonisation each small remote local district had virtual autonomy in educational policy.  The countries of origin of the colonists also influenced schooling methods.  However, by 1860 nearly all the northern states had appointed state superintendents of schools and state boards of education with overall control of policy.

There was considerable controversy over religious teaching in state schools.  Originally most schools had been attached to churches and in New England Catholics had developed a separate school system, from kindergarten to college.  However, as a result of dissent between Catholics and Protestants, and between the various Protestant sects, an entirely non-denominational state school system developed.

In the late 19th century the demand for good schools was intensified by the large number of immigrants who came to America partly because educational opportunities there were already so much better than in their home countries.  Many Jews, for example, emigrated from Tsarist Russia (which included countries later part of the USSR, and part of Poland), where they were discriminated against educationally.  Mary Antin, for example, born 1881 in Polotsk, Belarus, emigrated with her family partly because 'education in America was free':

Mary Antin and her sister
(Wikipedia)

'Education was free.  That subject my father had written about repeatedly, as comprising his chief hope for us children, the essence of American opportunity, the treasure that no thief could touch, not even misfortune or poverty.  It was the one thing that he was able to promise us when he sent for us; surer, safer than bread or shelter....'
(Mary Antin, The Promised Land, 1912, p. 185, internet edition available, quoted in Bremner, Children and Youth in America, a documentary history, 1971, Vol. 2, p. 57)

This was never really true.  Many children were educated at fee-paying schools, or privately. During most of the 19th century further education remained in the hands of the private academies, taking fee-paying pupils, although there were steady improvements in the provision of higher education by the state from 1821 when the first state high school was opened in Boston.

At first each state developed its educational system separately, with very uneven results. Although in the 17th century Massachusetts had pioneered the development of an educational system, by the 19th century states such as Pennsylvania, Virginia and particularly New York were taking the lead.  Educational provision in the more rural and agricultural south continued to lag behind the north, although North Carolina was an exception  Here there were, unusually, a large number of independent schools and in 1837 they set up a comprehensive educational system, for the white population.  The relatively new state of California, part of the USA from 1850, developed its educational system the fastest, going from virtually nothing in the 1850s to a progressive comprehensive system in the 1860s.

In 1853 Edward Austin Sheldon set up an integrated school system in Oswego on Lake Ontario.  The lower schools were divided into primary, junior and senior, a pupil spending three years in each, followed by four years in high school.  A unified system of teaching was enforced by strict timetabling and frequent exams.  This gradually became the basis of a universally accepted system.  Tuition at high schools was standardised by the demands of college entrance requirements.
(Good & Teller, op.cit. p.202)

Between 1820 and 1855 a large number of educational journals were started which spread new educational ideas and stimulated discussion of teaching methods.  Various experiments in educational methods were encouraged.  The English monitorial system developed in Southwark, London, U.K.by Joseph Lancaster (1778-1838) became popular in America because the use of pupil teachers cut costs.  The Swiss educator Philippe Fellenberg (1771-1844) developed a similar system using the pupils' manual labour to cut costs, and this was introduced in some states.  Kindergartens, developed by the German Friedrich Froebel (1782-1852) and by Pestalozzi (1846-1827, Switzerland) were experimentally developed in the USA by John Dewey (1859-1952)

The English traveller and writer Frances Trollope described a New York school run by Mr. Ibbertson in the 1830s.  The children were between eighteen months and six years old.   In the classrooms:
 'a set of  Dutch toys arranged as a cabinet of natural history was excellent; the walls were hung with gay papers of different patterns...Large and excellent coloured engravings of birds and beasts were exhibited in succession as the theme of a little lesson.'
(Frances Trollope Domestic manners of the Americans, 2 vols, 1832, internet edition available.  Quote from 4th ed. p. 289)

Following the success of kindergarten experiments, in the 1850s a system of teaching lessons round some concrete object, aptly called 'object teaching' was pioneered at Oswego.  Although it had mixed success the influence of this idea can still be seen in nature study lessons in Britain and America.  Felix Adler (1851-1933, German-Jewish by background) pioneered experiments in teaching craft work to higher grades in New York.

Swiss and German educationalists were pioneering some of the most advanced educational methods in Europe in the 19th century.  There were large numbers of immigrants from these areas to America and they brought many new educational theories, much to the benefit of American education.

The thinly scattered population in frontier and rural areas encouraged the development of co-education at secondary level long before it was introduced in Britain.  This did not suit or please all the children.  Henry James went to a succession of day schools in New York in the mid 19th century, and simply ignored the girls:

'...there was the degrading fact, that with us literally consorted and contended Girls, that we sat and strove, even though we drew the line at playing with them, and at knowing them...'
(Henry James, A small boy and others, op.cit, p. 21)

Henry James with his father
(A small boy and others, frontis)

In Mark Twain's autobiographical novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, 1876, the deepest disgrace a boy could suffer was to be sent to sit by the girls.  (Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910 writing of his school in Missouri,)
The heroine of the Canadian L. M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables was equally disgraced by being sent to sit by a boy. (pub. 1906 and set on Prince Edward Island in rural Canada)

Twaine has left one of the most evocative accounts of growing up in rural America before 1850.
He grew up in Monroe County, Missouri, in a village which:
'had two streets, each a couple of hundred yards long; the rest of the avenues were lanes, with rail fences and cornfields on either side.  Both the streets and the lanes were paved with the same material - tough black mud in wet times, deep dust in dry'.

 The village school house, which also served as the church, was made of logs like most of the houses.  It had a raised punchon floor of logs under which hogs slept; a cool breeze came through it in winter and fleas in summer.  There were slab benches made of half a log, bark side down.  The pupils, about twenty-five boys and girls, attended rather irregularly, many of them walking long distances and bringing packed lunches with them.  Twain started school there when he was seven.  On his first day a 'strapping girl of fifteen in the customary sunbonnet and calico dress, asked me if I "used tobacco" - meaning did I chew it.  I said no.  It roused her scorn.  She reported me to all the crowd, and said "Here is a boy seven years old who can't chew tobacco"...I realised that I was a degraded object.'
(Autobiography of Mark Twain, 1924, Vol. 1, p.7, Project Gutenberg internet edition available)

Long Plain schoolhouse, Massachusetts

Even quite small children often travelled long distanced by themselves, or with other children, to get to school.  Henry Ostler became a clergyman in a remote Canadian settlement in the 1850s, and his son Eward, aged eight, would regularly drive himself back from school behind a pair of horses: 'Baby as he was for such work' wrote his English cousin.
(Anne Wilkinson, Lions in the Way, a discursive history of the Ostlers, 1957, p. 140, 1st pub. pre- 1923, internet digitised copy available from Amazon)

His brother William went to school in Dundas, Ontario, Canada, where the Latin grammar school and the common, free, school were both in the same building and were constantly at war.  The grammar school was modelled on Eton and Rugby, even to the wearing of top hats.  William led the grammar school gang which was extremely wild.  They shut a flock of geese in the school, unscrewed the desks, which were attached to the floor, as they often were in schools, and removed them, and fumigated the Matron, who sent them to Toronto jail.  His mother wrote:
'It was an unfortunate affair that of all you boys being brought into public notice in such a disreputable manner...although I do not think it was meant to be more than a schoolboy prank.'
(Anne Wilkinson, op.cit. chapter 8)

Compulsory school attendance laws were first passed in 1852 in Massachusetts.  Nevertheless school attendance remained as erratic in America and Canada as it did in Britain.  A common complaint made by children sent to Canada as apprentices to farmers was that they only received a few terms of schooling.  The southern states of America were generally behind the north, and predictably the education of the Black population, mainly concentrated in this region, was a cause of dissension both before and after the American Civil War.  In some areas missionary help to Black Americans, which generally involved at least basic tuition in reading was encouraged on the plantations, as for example on the Wade Hampton plantation in Columbia, South Carolina:

'The importance of beginning all instruction at an early period of life has suggested the propriety of catechising the children, and to this the attention of our Missionaries on the plantations has been specially directed, and there are now hundreds of little negroes who can repeat the entire catechism.'
Family letters of the three Wade Hamptons 1782-1901, ed. Charles E. Cauthen, 1953, p. 32  No internet edition at present)

Segregated schooling, Washington DC, early 20th century
(Children in history)

Frederick Law Olsted,(1822-1903) best known as the developer of landscape architecture, including Central Park New York and Golden Gate Park San Francisco, had a previous career as a journalist.  He was commissioned by the New York Times to travel through the southern states of America.  His classic account was published in 1853-4 as A Journey in the Back Country in the winter of 1853-4. pub. 1860, internet edition of this important social history available) He did record one Mississippi plantation owner proud of his slaves having all taught themselves to read, but in most states, Mississippi included, teaching slaves to read was actually discouraged or unlawful, especially after the uprising in Virginia led by Nat Turner (1800 hanged for rebellion 1831)

Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) the African American abolitionist and social reformer, was born a slave in Maryland. In his classic memoirs he describes how, when he was about eight, the wife of his master began to teach him to read but was stopped by her husband:

'"Now", said he, "if you teach that nigger (speaking of myself) how to read, there would be no stopping him.  It would forever unfit him to be a slave...As to himself, it would do him no good, but a great deal of harm.  It would make him discontented and unhappy."

Douglas, determined to learn and when he was sent on errands would bribe the poor white boys with bread to teach him:
'I am strongly tempted to give the names of two or three of those little boys as a testimonial of the gratitude and affection I bear them; but prudence forbids...for it is an almost unpardonable offence to teach slaves to read in this Christian country.'
(Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, an American slave, written by himself, Boston, published at the Anti-Slavery Office, 1845. Quoted Bremner, op.cit. Vol. 1 p. 517, 1960 ed. p. 58, 64.  Project Gutenberg internet edition available.)

Frederick Douglass as a young man
(National Parks Archive)

After the American Civil War ended slavery, at least officially, considerable efforts were made, especially by the Freedman's Bureau, to educate the largely illiterate black population, partly because literacy was linked to voting rights. ( The struggle for universal suffrage in America was a long one, white women only receiving the vote in 1920, Black Americans in all American states only in 1965) The black population now found itself in competition with poor whites for limited resources, and jobs, controlled by the white landowning classes.  The decision to provide separate educational facilities for blacks and whites meant, in practise, inferior facilities for blacks.  Even in the north, which had fought a war unprecedented in world history over the moral issue of slavery, there was prejudice against the sharing of educational facilities.  The first black entrants to Harvard University in 1850 were forced to leave after only five months and no more were admitted until 1870.
(se F & G Hechinger, op.cit, p. 254)

The Osburne family, Gulielma Street, Philadelphia, c.1847.
(Bethel Burying Ground Project)

The arrow points to the location of the Osborne family residence in 1847.They resided in the rear of no. 2 Gulielma Street (now Naudain). The family lived in one room for which they paid $3 a month (about $75 in today’s currency.) Ms. Osbourne was occupied as a laundress and Anthony worked as a waiter no doubt on nearby Broad Street. Both adults and all the children were born in Pennsylvania according to the 1847 African American Census. 

The 1847 Census reveals that 20 African American families lived on Gulielma Street for a told of 79 men, women and children. Most of the families lived in 12’x 12 hovels that used to be a horse stable or pig pen. The Osborne family lived in one of these hovels. Mr. and Mrs. Osburne could read and write, belonged to a beneficial society and regularly attended religious services.

Determined efforts were made to Americanise the different ethnic groups which made up 19th century America.  Native American children were given a crash course in the white American way of life in special boarding schools.  Poles, Russians, Germans, Swedes, Czechs, Slovaks, Ukranians, Lithuanians, Magyars and Italians were all forced, or at least encouraged, to give up their cultural identity and conform, even to the extent that foreign languages were not taught at all ion schools for a time.  Robert Bremner quotes Leonard Covello's wry account of his teacher Americanising his family, Coviello, by dropping the 'i'.  His parents were deeply upset.  Leonard did not understand why:

'"What difference does it make?" I said.  "It's more American..."'
His friend decided: '"I'm gonna take the 'e' off the end of my name and make it just Salvator.  After all, we're not in Italy now."
Vito and I were standing dejectedly under the gas light on the corner, watching the lamp-lighter moving from post to post along the cobblestone street and then disappearing round the corner on First Avenue.  Somehow or other the joy of childhood had seeped out of our lives.  We were only boys, but a sadness that we could not explain pressed down on us.'
(Leonard Covello (1887-1982) with Guido D'Agostino The Heart is the Teacher, 1958, p. 21, 29.)
 
Covello was born in Italy and came to America in 1896. He became Principal of Benjamin Franklin High School, New York City and left a large collection of photographic images of East Harlem to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.   See also Bremner, op. cit, Vol. 2, p. 58)

Italian immigrants, Ellis Island, late 19th century
(Pinterest)

American schoolbooks played an important part in moulding the opinions of American children.  Because they were almost exclusively composed by Americans from the north eastern seaboard they often included anti-slavery propaganda.  They often also included accounts of the dis-inheriting of the original native people of America and Canada.   frequently quoting Chief Sagnyn Whathah's well known address at the Council of the Chiefs of the Six Nations, 1805.  The Six Nations of the Grand River, a federation of the Iroquois tribes, sided mainly with the Canadians and consequently found themselves Canadians after the American War of Independence (1775-83) They now possess the largest Native Peoples Reserve in America and Canada.
 In 1805 Chief Sagnyn Whathaha said, sadly:

'There was a time when our forefathers owned this great island...But an evil day came upon us; your forefathers crossed the great waters, and landed upon this island; their numbers were small; they found us friends and not enemies.  They told us they had fled from their own country, through fear of wicked men, and had come here to enjoy their religion...You have now become a great people, and we have scarcely a place left to spread our blankets....'
(Quoted from John Pierpont, The American First Class Book; or, Exercises in reading and recitation, selected principally from modern authors of Great Britain and America...Boston, 1826. internet edition available at archive.org)

Not all school books favoured the Native Americans.  Joshua Levitt presented the opposing view of the settlement of America:
'Instead of bloody heathen Indians, with their powows, and cruel murders, there are now christian (sic) people, with sabbaths, and churches, and ministers, and day schools; and sabbath schools; and books; and especially the Bible, GOD'S book....'
(Joshua Leavitt, Easy lessons in reading for the use of the younger classes in common schools,  Boston 1827 p. 94 internet edition available at archive.org, though p. 94 is missing from the copy digitised.  Many of the pieces are taken from British children's books)

The dramatic clash between two very different ways of life is described as seen through a child's eyes by Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867-1957) in Little House on the Prairie.  She and the other homesteaders moving in to farm the Native Americans' land were fortunate that no violent clashes occurred but there is a constant sense of threatened danger in this particular volume of her childhood memories.
(Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House on the Prairie, 1957.  She and her family farmed for a time in West Minnesota, then granted as Native American territory

Laura Ingalls Wilder and her sisters, c. 1879
(Seattle Times)

Even as late as 1892 this sense of the uncertainties of life in the remoter areas persists.  Leland W. Cutler (from San Francisco) tells an amusing story of meeting a party of Native Americans while out collecting blackberries:
'To me they were savages and my tow hair stood on end, ready for the scalping.  The Chief grunted "You show us your house, they buy blackberry, you no pick...So the procession of one scared little white boy and a dozen strapping Indians started out...'
(Leland W. Cutler America is good to a country boy, Stanford U.P. 1954 p. 7)

Sun Chief, the autobiography of a Hopi Indian, contains an interesting account of his early education on the mesa table-land, Arizona:

'By the time I was six...I could help plant and weed, went out herding with my father, and was a kiva trader (exchanging goods for the men)  I owned a dog and a cat, a small bow made by my father, and a few good arrows...I could ride a tame burro, kill a kangaroo rat, and catch small birds...I had made a name for myself by healing people; and I had almost stopped running after my mother for her milk.
(Don C. Talayesva, ed. Leo W. Simmons,  Sun Chief; The Autobiography of a Hopi Indian.  1942, p. 51 etc.)

After the American Civil War American school books became a vehicle for nationalist propaganda.  The preface to The American First Class Book by John Pierpont describes this as:

'...the result of an attempt to supply the want...of a book of Exercises in reading and speaking...less obnoxious to complaint on the ground of its national or political character than it is reasonable to expect that any English compilation would be, among a people whose manners, opinions, literary institutions, and civil government, are so strictly republican as our own.'
(John Pierpont, op.cit. Preface)

William Holmes McGuffy's Popular Readers were published for the same purpose.  Rufus Griswold's Readings in American Poetry, 1843, not only introduced children to American poets where previously they had largely read the standard British ones,  but encouraged them to take pride in being American.
(Rufus Griswold, Readings in American poetry for the use of schools, 1843 internet edition available, archive.com)

Frontispiece to Rufus Griswold Readings in American poetry
(archive.org)

The poems included were chosen because they 'relate to the grand and beautiful in our scenery; or assert the dignity and rights of man, as recognised in our theory of government.'  Important political speeches, extracts from the Declaration of Independence and anti-British propaganda were often included:

'I have told you how the mean King James worried the Puritans.  He hated the Roman Catholics just as much and persecuted them in many ways...'
(J. Lossing Benson, A primary history of the United States  for schools and families, 1857, p. 45.  Internet edition available, googlebooks)

'Ye despots! too long did your tyranny hold us,
In vassalage vile, ere its weakness was known...'
(John Frost, The American Speaker, Philadelphia, 1838, The American Patriot's Song.)

John Quincy Adams (1767-1848) son of the second President, John Adams, who himself became the 6th President, watched Charlestown, South Carolina, burn during the War of Independence, when he was seven.  When he went to school in Andover it was part of schoolboy lore that all their hoops, sledges and other precious possesins should have thirteen marks on them to symbolise the thirteen states of the Union.
(Alice Morse Earle, Child Life in Colonial Days, 1899, p. 172, internet edition available, Project Gutenberg)

John Quincy Adams at about 10,
(National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian)

Children were encouraged to be sturdy republicans and to despise the stereotype of the European gentleman of leisure; Joshua Leavitt's Easy Lessons in Reading, 1827 includes a short play in which a group of colonists describe their skills and the would-be gentleman was rejected:
'"Why, sir, you will have the credit of having one gentleman in your colony."
"Ha, ha, ha, a fine gentleman, truly.  Well, sir...at present we want no drones..."'
(Joshua Leavitt, Easy Lessons in reading for the use of the younger classes in common schools, Boston, 1827, p.95 internet edition available, googlebooks, though p. 95-6 is missing.)

This also includes the explanation for the colonists calling the native inhabitants Indians:

'The people of these Islands (the Bahamas) were not white, like the men of Europe, nor black like the natives of Africa.  They were tawny, or copper-coloured, like the people of India in Asia, and the Europeans called them Indians.  They had never seen a white person before, and were much surprised when they saw the Spaniards.
(Leavitt, o.cit. p. 93)

The story of George Washington cutting down the cherry tree was a popular one, combining patriotic sentiment with a good exemplary story:

'8. .... Presently  George and his little hatchet made their appearance.  "George" said his father, "Do you know who killed that beautiful little cherry tree yonder in the garden?"
9. This was a tough question; and George staggered under it for a moment; but quickly recovered himself; and looking at his father, with the sweet face of youth, brightened with the charm of honesty he bravely cried out, "I can't tell a lie, Pa, you know I can't tell a lie, I did it with my little hatchet."
"Run to my arms, my dearest boy", said the father, "you have paid me for my tree a thousand times, and I hope my son will always be hero enough to tell the truth, let come what will come."'
(Leavitt, op.cit, p. 143-4, internet edition available, googlebooks)

George Washington as a boy
(AHS World History )

In frontier areas, of course, children quickly learned to be self reliant, and if they got less academic schooling, they got more practical training than most children in towns and cities.

In the 19th century large numbers of children from poor families, generally from orphanages and foundling homes  were shipped to Canada and fostered or apprenticed to farmers.  These ventures were largely organised by charities such as Dr. Barnardo's.  Phyllis Harrison collected the stories of children sent between 1871 and 1930 in The Home Children.  For many this was a terrible experience.  Nearly all felt they were exploited and despised for their origins, but many also found the hard work a training for life and were able to build lives for themselves in the New World.  Here is one account, by Fred Ashmore:

'I arrived at this farm after dark.  They showed me the pump and told me to start pumping and the farmer would let the cows loose to get a drink.  I had never seen a cow before.  They came rushing out of the dark and scared the life nearly out of me.  That was my first experience in Canada and I will never forget it.  I was eight years old at the time, out from the Strangeways Home in Manchester.  I arrived in April 1903 at Mrs. Merry's Home in Belleville and went out to the farm.  The people were pretty good to me there, but I had to work hard.'
(Phyllis Harrison, ed. The Home Children: Their personal stories, 1979.  Quote from Fred Ashmore, Cardiff, Ontario, p. 69.)

Immigrant child coal miners, Pennsylvania,
(website, immigrant child labour Latin American studies)

Children of immigrants learned to be grateful that they were born Americans, and, looking at the rest of the world,  well, they didn't do too badly.

'And everyone born in this free and beautiful country should be proud of it, thankful to God for it, and willing to do every thing that is right to keep it free and good.'
(Lossing op. cit. Preface p. 6)

Young Americans learned that America had a duty to set an example to the rest of the world:
 'to raise the trampled rights of humanity from the dust'.
(Frost, The American Speaker op. cit. )

Syrian Americans, Syrian Quarter, New York City,
(World Culture Encyclopaedia)

They learned to salute the American flag every school day morning, and to sing
The Star-spangled Banner, to put the countries they came from behind them, and pledge themselves to the American Dream.  If that dream has come to be questioned,  it is still a remarkable pledge and a dream worth the dreaming:

'I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!'

(Martin Luther King, Black American activist for civil rights, 28 August 1963)