ENROLLMENT AND TEACHING FORCE OF PRIVATE AND PAROCHIAL SCHOOLS IN WISCONSIN, 1914-15 AND 1915-16[29] ========================================================= |1914-15|1915-16 -----------------------------------------+-------+------- Number attending private or parochial | | schools only--counties |24,370 |25,373 Number attending private or parochial | | schools only--cities |21,736 |18,556 Number attending both public and private,| | or parochial schools--counties |34,335 |34,958 Number attending both public and private,| | or parochial schools--cities | 1,441 | 3,276 | | Teaching force of private and parochial | | schools in counties: | | Men | 288 | Women | 600 | Total | 888 | 909 =========================================================
There was a case in Wisconsin in 1918 of a German father sentenced to five years in the penitentiary for persuading his son to evade the draft. An editorial commenting on the case said:
This man, though German in every sense of the word, was born in America. Yet when he was on trial he had great difficulty in understanding questions put to him in English. Born in America, educated in American schools, nearly fifty years old, yet "he had great difficulty in understanding questions put in English!" Why? Because in the German--not American--community in which he was raised the education of American citizens was conducted in German.
A rural postmaster of German descent in a small backwoods town in Wisconsin, who claimed to have lost long ago his faith in "the Kaiser's Fatherland," as he put it, stated that there are thousands and thousands of such victims of the German parochial schools in the state, who, though born and brought up here, are unable to converse freely in English. This is especially true among those who live on farms in a German colony and go only to a German school and church.
Now these people suffer and are ashamed of themselves. But who is responsible? I think both the German clergy and other leaders for victimizing these people, as well as the American public for allowing such mischief.
In regard to the situation in South Dakota, the Federal Bureau of Education reports (Bulletin, No. 31, 1918) that,
some counties, Hutchinson, for example, are largely peopled by German stock. A large portion of the school population attend German Catholic and German Lutheran parochial schools in which German has been used largely as a medium of instruction. (Recently stopped by order of the State Council of Defense.) In this county, and in Hanson County, the German-Russian Mennonites still live the quaint community life brought with them from Russia. German, not English, is the language of the villages, although in most of the schools English is the medium of instruction.