Second-Generation Civic America: Education, Citizenship, and the Children of Immigrants

Abstract

Second-Generation Civic America: Education, Citizenship, and Children of Immigrants The onset of recurrent mass immigration forced United States to deal with a new problem the preservation of ability of people of dissimilar origins to act together under dissimilar conditions. Public institutions and ethnic groups faced challenge of creating forms of social capital that would facilitate crossing of boundaries for social and civic participation. Putnam has described complex of networking, norms, and mutual social trust bringing together different groups in pursuit of common social and civic objectives as bridging social capital.' Both public schools and settlement houses of Progressive era directed creative forces for organizing social and civic networks to overcome group divisions. These institutions were, in part, a reaction to putative weakness of bridging social capital in immigrant communities in an attempt to advance public spiritedness and commitment to public interest. Progressiveera educators and settlement workers, responding to perception that nation had become a society of myriad sub-communities isolated and alienated from each other, identified a second-generation problem: Deprived of both upbringing in their ancestral homeland and assimilation into their host society, children of immigrants existed in a transnational