| Chapter 1: | Italian Americana 1920s–1930s |
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Although I considered myself fortunate in having fine teachers, I was aware there was a relative paucity of Italian American teachers in my school; I cannot recall any teacher in my elementary school with an Italian name to serve as a role model. Formal guidance, as I remember, left much to be desired—rather than an exercise tailored to individual aptitudes, it was closer to the practice of funneling students into presumed predictable patterns that frequently meant encouraging enrollment in vocational schools in poorer immigrant neighborhoods. Thus, although possessing a superior academic elementary school record including skipping a grade for proven proficiency, I opted for a vocational school. My thinking was that since I would most likely end up working in the trades, as was the case with the overwhelming majority of young people in my neighborhood, it would be useful to learn a trade in a vocational school. Neither elementary school personnel nor family dissuaded me since in fact it was an unalterable fact that most of my acquaintances, including those who went to academic high schools, earned a living working in factories. Accordingly, I did learn the basic rudiments of machine shop in high school, and for a few years worked in that field; however, the vocational high school curriculum was bereft of language study, advanced English literature, higher mathematics and advanced science. In the early grades of secondary school, the physical education program was also disappointing—basically, it consisted of taking showers—undoubtedly the influence of the Americanization emphasis that characterized that era which placed a priority on sanitary conditions and cleanliness. Fortunately, physical education courses improved in the later grades. I cannot help but consider that it most surely would have been a different experience for me in a traditional high school where I might have studied Italian, for example. Study of Italian in high school, long resisted by the educational establishment, apparently was of relatively recent vintage having only been introduced in the 1920s. Ironically, many years later, I was to establish a close relationship with Leonard Covello who was a pioneer in the educational field in the immediate post-World War I period, and who tersely described the effort to establish a conformist school curriculum.