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Educating the American Citizen: Changes in Schools as Assimilators of Immigrants. Backgrounder No. 3894

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Bibliographic Details
Title: Educating the American Citizen: Changes in Schools as Assimilators of Immigrants. Backgrounder No. 3894
Language: English
Authors: Jay P. Greene, Lindsey M. Burke, Adeline Kaufman, Isabella Vennare, James V. Shuls, Heritage Foundation, Center for Education Policy
Source: Heritage Foundation. 2025.
Availability: Heritage Foundation. 214 Massachusetts Avenue NE, Washington, DC 20002-4999. Tel: 202-546-4400; Fax: 202-546-8328; e-mail: info@heritage.org; Web site: http://www.heritage.org
Peer Reviewed: N
Page Count: 13
Publication Date: 2025
Document Type: Information Analyses
Education Level: Elementary Secondary Education
Descriptors: Citizenship Education, Immigrants, Acculturation, Elementary Secondary Education, Institutional Mission, Educational Trends, Educational Attitudes, Values, Values Education, Cultural Pluralism, Political Attitudes, School Choice
Abstract: K-12 schools have historically been among the most important institutions for assimilation of immigrants--American values were taught along with the three Rs. Over the past decades, the institutions that train educators have adopted dramatically different views, often rejecting assimilation and American values completely. To test whether attitudes have changed about the assimilating mission of schools, the authors conducted a systematic examination of "Peabody Journal of Education" articles, using a key word search on the journal's website for the words "immigration" and "assimilation," yielding 204 articles between 1924 and 2018. The analysis of trends in how immigration and assimilation are treated reveals a sharp change in attitudes among educators. Over the past century there has been a significant decline in articles viewing American values and political institutions in a positive way, a drop in seeing immigration as a challenge to address through assimilation, a rise in viewing differences between immigrants' values and existing American values, language, and culture as a benefit to be embraced, and an increase in the belief that schools should accommodate immigrant students' culture, traditions, and language.
Abstractor: ERIC
Entry Date: 2025
Accession Number: ED677271
Database: ERIC
Description
Abstract:K-12 schools have historically been among the most important institutions for assimilation of immigrants--American values were taught along with the three Rs. Over the past decades, the institutions that train educators have adopted dramatically different views, often rejecting assimilation and American values completely. To test whether attitudes have changed about the assimilating mission of schools, the authors conducted a systematic examination of "Peabody Journal of Education" articles, using a key word search on the journal's website for the words "immigration" and "assimilation," yielding 204 articles between 1924 and 2018. The analysis of trends in how immigration and assimilation are treated reveals a sharp change in attitudes among educators. Over the past century there has been a significant decline in articles viewing American values and political institutions in a positive way, a drop in seeing immigration as a challenge to address through assimilation, a rise in viewing differences between immigrants' values and existing American values, language, and culture as a benefit to be embraced, and an increase in the belief that schools should accommodate immigrant students' culture, traditions, and language.