Salt Lake Telegram | 1916-08-04 | Page 19 | Education of Immigrants is a National Problem Says Herbert Quick

r. r Education ri of f. f Immigrants Is a a Nati National nai Problem It i SAYS HERBERT QUICK By HERBERT QUICK We have in this country no state in which the the ability to read and write the English language is insisted upon as u a qualification for tor citizenship No state seems to care whether or not its adult population can read and write English Ush at all Even minors above compulsory school age are allowed to struggle along without a knowledge of ot English Apparently the states do not I care whether people read and write English or some other language And yet the citizen of ot any state who does not read and write English can scarcely have ha-e that intimate acquaintance with the country in which he lives that every citizen ought to have For all our books national poetry pamphlets the very talk on the streets from which even more than from the printed page Americanism is imbibed imbIbed all all these are in ENGLISH Americanization Is a good two-thirds two accomplished when the Immigrant knows English There are over of foreign born here Half Halt of ot them are men who might all be voters Less than half of these men have been naturalized I do not know which Is the greatest danger to us as a nation nation nation-a a huge mass of ot aliens who enter Intimately into our social and business and labor problems but who are not voters or a similar mass who ho are voters but either do not read and write write- at all or do not become acquainted with the mother t tongue ngue of the United States In the one case their wrongs and discontents will willbe willbe be brooded over and they will be contemned by our own people as aliens In Inthe Inthe Inthe the other they will be voted by politicians who specialize In their particular nationalities will never see us clearly and will never be met face tace to face by us It is time that the bureau of ot education of the department of ot the interior become something besides a machine for compiling statistics s ani and an publishing reports For generations there has been a question as to whether or not there is any real work for the the bureau of ot t education to do Its great work when it finds itself must be in m the direction of ot carrying on some real work in education tion which Is la a a. national task instead of a local one