Lost in America

Foreign Policy: Lost in America: "Speak two languages and you’re bilingual. Speak one? You must be American. So goes the old joke. But globalization means that students can no longer remain blissfully unaware. Can Americans open the classroom door, or will today’s youth be unprepared to lead tomorrow’s world?

Public education was designed to manufacture citizens. American textbooks appeared, scrubbed clean of continental influence. Georgia legislators actually banned study abroad before the age of 16. Even bitter political rivals of men such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson saw the utility in building up a few common heroes. If Americans had nothing in common but America, then public education would unite them.

A homogenizing civic education prevailed without much dissent for more than a century, mostly because new waves of immigrants—Italians, Irish, Eastern Europeans—kept arriving. That ethos did face challenges. When, in the 1840s, German Americans in Cincinnati, Ohio, lobbied for their children to learn German, school administrators feared losing this wealthy, educated community to private schools, so they squeezed German into the curriculum. Later, Italian immigrants put pressure on New York City schools, and in the 1930s, an Italian-American principal offered his kids the country’s first Italian class. Still, traditional ideals endured."