German Americans Paradox Of A Model Minority Summary

This article ‘Germans Americans: Paradoxes of a model minority’ discusses about their immigrations and the problems associated with it. First of all, in May 1917, was against the fact that bilingual schools of Indianapolis state were singing star Spangled banner in German translation even though they were had the least number of ethnic groups. Germans almost did not exist. Benjamin franklin said that they were trying to make people German instead of adapting to the language or culture they lived in. As time passed, many immigrants started moving to US from southern and Eastern Europe. They thought of Germans as good and bad people. Germans in American became more urbanized over the nineteenth century and their population started to increase. During the nineteenth century, the city was home to more than 20 to 30 percent of the German population. As the years went by, their urbanization rate started to decline. Later they moved to farming areas they bought the lands.
They were less concentrated on farming but more on being urban.
Even the newly arrived Germans were trying to be more urban even though they had no access to any land. The Germans were in a large group therefore there were many people for farming. During the nineteenth century, Germans were a leading group in US cities. Behind them were Irish, Italians, and Jewish people in terms of population. Having the highest population enabled Germans to share their culture and language among the other people. A German immigrant usually meant a farmer and the way they crop was similar to their neighbors who were Anglo – Americans. By 1950, most of the Germans were landowners. But some of the acts by Germans were not accepted by the Anglo- Americans. They held onto the lands at the cost of children’s education, sending their wives and daughters to do hard
work. Religion was a great factor with the settlement of Germans in America. Most people lived were Catholics but the population of Germans took over them. German Jews were also part of this. The Germans united in the factors of language and culture as mentioned earlier. They were even dominating Christianity. It was least known in the cities wherever Germans settled. Many such conflicts occurred. For example, a disagreement with Know-nothings on closing theaters on Sunday led to a fight that killed 8 people in St. Louis. But the dominancy of Germans went down between 1848 and 1917. Since they had the highest population, they started daily newspapers that were one of the best sellers. The ratio was that more than one paper was printed in German for every two immigrants. By the late nineteenth century, most of the Germans were literate. As time went by, it started declining even though they had high amount of population. Newspapers declined from 92000 in 1884 to 50000 in 1910 as well as their revenue. There were many German language elementary schools, both public and private. More than 100000 Catholic children studied in 2100 German schools together. In 1838, more than 12 states required to be taught foreign language in schools if parents requests for it. In Missouri, most of the schools taught some German. Some states such as Chicago and New York, taught German as a subject for an hour a day bur Baltimore, Cleveland taught more German. In Indianapolis, they divided the school with English and German, eleven hours each. German children spent five hours in learning English. During the twentieth century, more than 8 percent of the schools in Ohio were studying German even though the German population was less. But all the foreign language in schools was eliminated after World War 1. They wanted to teach English to all the kids in elementary schools and many other states agreed to that.