As this visiting developed among the different groups, several results
could be anticipated. Just as the needs of the unaccompanied girls
have been learned in this way, the needs of the families in the
different groups could become more exactly understood, and devices for
meeting those needs more efficiently worked out. It would perhaps be
possible to urge the woman to learn English when she is first
confronted with the strangeness of her situation, and before she
slips into the makeshifts by which she later is apparently able to get
on without learning English. Instruction in English might be made to
appear the path of least resistance, if it were made attractive and
available to the immigrant housewife at a sufficiently early moment.
These visitors might preferably be English-speaking members of the
foreign-speaking groups. If there were a sufficient staff, they might
also render many similar services to other women in the foreign-born
groups. They could persuade those who have not yet learned English to
come into English classes; they could organize groups for instruction
in cooking, child care, house and neighborhood sanitation; and
gradually accumulate both additional knowledge as to the need and
experience in meeting it.
A point to be emphasized in connection with this service is that it is
not related in any way to the problem of dependency, but is directed
wholly toward meeting the difficulties growing out of the strangeness
of the newcomer to the immediate situation. By developing a method for
lessening the difficulties connected with the migration of any group
from one section to another differing in industrial or social
organization, light would be thrown on analogous problems such as the
movements among the negroes from the South to the North during the
war, or of the mountain people to the cotton-mill villages at an
earlier date.
Another point to be emphasized is that while the method of approach
and of immediate service can be developed independently, and while the
amount of discomfort and genuine distress that can be prevented is
very great--as is shown in the experience of families whom such
organizations as now attempt work along this line have aided--the
opportunity for swift and efficient adjustment will be dependent on
the development of a body of educational technique.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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