Children and Childhood in American Religions

Chapter 12: Immigrant Parochial Schools: Religion, Morality, Citizenship

194 12 Immigrant Parochial Schools Religion, Morality, Citizenship PAUL D. NUMR ICH Established in 197, the Islamic Foundation is one of metropolitan Chicago ’s largest and most successful immigrant mosques. Located in affluent DuPage County, the tenth-wealthiest U.S. county in terms of median household income, the Islamic Foundation opened an elementary school in 1988, moving eventually to a full K–12 program. The Islamic Foundation School is accredited and recognized for its excellence by the state of Illinois. Asked to describe the most significant challenge facing its student body, one school administrator explained, “For the students, the biggest challenge is the struggle and temptation that they see around them in mainstream society. I mean, they are Muslims, and our aim is to produce Muslim identities . We want to produce clear Muslim identities, but American citizens as well who would be totally comfortable in mainstream society but not lose their identity. This is easier said than done.” This statement anticipates several key topics in this chapter. First, immigrant parents and community leaders often worry about the struggles and temptations their children face in a new (for the immigrants) society, particularly in the public school setting. Immigrant congregations often perceive the larger society as inherently threatening or corrosive to the religious identity and moral standards of the immigrant community, typically addressing this tension with the larger society through general educational programming. Some immigrant congregations take the significant next step of establishing a parochial school, that is, a full-time school operated by a IMMIGR A NT PA ROCHI A L SCHOOL S 195 religious group or organization as an alternative to government-sponsored public education for grades K–12 or some portion thereof. Yet, second, establishing a parochial school does not necessarily signal an immigrant congregation’s radical separation or retreat from positive civic engagement with the larger society. Note the school administrator’s references to “mainstream society” above. The Islamic Foundation School seeks to produce Muslim American citizens who will maintain their distinctive religious identities and moral standards without succumbing to the perceived pitfalls of the larger society, but also without opting out of society altogether. This is the mark of what can be labeled “mainstream” immigrant parochial education, across all religious traditions and throughout American history. As we shall see, this kind of parochial education considers itself a transformative or redemptive influence on society. Third, parochial school education is certainly “easier said than done.” We will examine the challenges and difficulties faced by those immigrant congregations that establish parochial schools. Not all immigrant congregations desire to do so, while some with the desire lack the institutional resources, at least in the short term. Moreover, some immigrant communities have established significant parochial school movements, while others have not. We will examine such patterns to see what can be learned about immigrant parochial education generally. We will also consider larger lessons about the education of children in America, both immigrant and nonimmigrant.1 Education in the Immigrant Context In a classic essay, historian Timothy L. Smith asserted that “migration was often a theologizing experience” for American immigrants and that this theologizing included strong moral overtones. Uprooted from their home countries and replanted in a new society, religious immigrants of all traditions tend to become preoccupied with “the ethical dimension of faith,” Smith explained. “Once in America, immigrants uniformly felt that learning new patterns of correct behavior was crucial to their sense of well-being.” The resulting “immigrant Puritanism,” Smith wrote, invoking Marcus Hansen’s phrase, is “a predictable reaction to the ethical or behavioral disorientation that affected most immigrants, whatever the place or the century of their arrival.”2 In a sense, much of what any congregation does can be considered “faith-based education,” that is, instruction in how to remain faithful to the worldview, practices, and, especially, the moral standards of an inherited religious tradition. Rituals, sermons, social activities, informal conversations— these and other components of common congregational life carry important didactic content. Additionally, congregations typically establish more formal 196 PAUL D. NUMR ICH educational programming, such as the “religious education” or catechetical instruction found in Christian contexts. These include children’s programs of various types, such as Sunday or weekend schools, weekday after-school and evening classes, short-term retreats and camps, preschool and other child-care programs, youth groups, and parochial schools (detailed below). The purpose of all...