Vol. 13 No. 1 (2026): Education and Migration in North America (1837-1983)
Monographic Section Articles

Classifying Difference – Italian Immigrant Pupils in US City School Systems, 1880s to 1920s

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  • Fanny Isensee
Fanny Isensee
Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/rse-19532

Published 2026-06-17

Keywords

  • school administration,
  • urban education,
  • immigration,
  • New York City,
  • Chicago

How to Cite

Isensee, F. (2026). Classifying Difference – Italian Immigrant Pupils in US City School Systems, 1880s to 1920s. Rivista Di Storia dell’Educazione, 13(1), 43–53. https://doi.org/10.36253/rse-19532

Copyright (c) 2026 Fanny Isensee

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

At the turn of the twentieth century, New York City’s public schools were confronted with unprecedented challenges. The consolidation of Greater New York in 1898, combined with massive immigration – particularly the third wave (ca. 1880-1920) bringing South and Eastern European immigrants – transformed the educational landscape. By the late 1920s, over two million of the city’s 5.5 million inhabitants were “foreign-born”. Children from Southern and Eastern European immigrant families faced particular stigmatization, with debates focusing on language barriers, national stereotypes, and varying educational levels. This contribution examines how the Board of Education and School Superintendents conceptualized and managed immigrant children who deviated from institutional norms. Drawing on archival materials including reclassification reports, psychological assessments, and surveys from educational research units, the study traces how educators operationalized psychological and psychometric knowledge from contemporary experts in statistics, developmental psychology, and intelligence testing. Additional sources – administrative reports, medical evaluations, and psychological assessments – illuminate the bureaucratic mechanisms underlying different classification models. Comparing New York City with Chicago as a second immigration hub reveals how municipal education systems identified certain immigrant groups as “problematic”, labeling them as «backward» or «retarded». This analysis shows that testing and reclassification were not merely administrative procedures but technologies of scientific management that constructed cultural ascriptions and hierarchies. Through precise documentation and measurement, school administrations created systems that were ostensibly designed to integrate immigrant children but ultimately reinforced social stratifications. The article thus exemplifies specific critical intersections between education, immigration, and pupil normalization through particular practices of school administration and organization.

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