The citizen factories : the Americanization of Mexican students in Texas public schools, 1920-1945

Abstract

This study examined and recorded the Americanization movement as it affected the education of Mexican students (Mexican-American and immigrant Mexican) in Texas public schools in the period 1920-1945. Previous research in the education of members of this minority group has concentrated on descriptive and experimental treatments concerning learning, achievement, and environmental factors as these function in the education of these students. No significant research has been done to examine the attempts made to acculturate and assimilate Mexican students as was reflected in the Americanization mood contemporary to that period. Though segregation of Mexican students had been regarded as a natural reaction prompted by racial prejudices, this practice was not legally required as in the case of Negro students. However, Mexican students, in addition to being segregated for racial reasons, were also segregated for educational purposes. This rationale was founded in the idea of Americanizing Mexican students with the ultimate goal of achieving "one flag, one language, one nation." An examination of federal, state, and local source materials revealed that efforts to Americanize in Texas were prompted and influenced by the national Americanization mood that arose during World War I, after the movement had lain dormant for a time. The new mood influenced public opinion in Texas and this established a distinctive pattern of Americanism in the public schools. National, state, professional, and lay influences exerted pressures on educational policies and practices. Local school districts, exercising the principle of local autonomy, promulgated their own distinctive Americanization programs consonant with the national and state mood..