Stephen
Lassonde: Learning to Forget: Schooling
and Family Life in
Précis
by Jonathan Wise
Stephen Lassonde’s Learning to Forget catalogues the
evolution of schooling as a public institution and as an acculturating process.
The arc of public schooling in New Haven, Connecticut from basic elementary
towards compulsory attendance in junior high and high schools is studied with a
particular emphasis on the class based ideals of both school reformers, and
especially the working class. He focuses
especially on the effects of public schooling on the Italian population of
According to Lassonde, his goal is
to demonstrate, “how schooling has shaped children, and how some children have
managed to evade its iron impositions” (ix). This general framework is narrowed
by placing closer emphasis on working-class Italian families, and the conflict
of values that compulsory schooling brought to the surface, both on the familial
and on the societal level.
Lassonde begins his study by
outlining the impact of immigration upon the city and the formation of
immigrant neighborhoods between 1840 and 1930. He demonstrates how immigrant
groups were able to reconstruct their previous societies within
In the realm of education, Lassonde
argues, the middle class imposed its ideals upon other groups. He emphasizes
the concept of sentimentalized childhood, which is a belief that children
should be of sentimental value rather than a cog in the familial work machine. This
middle-class ideal contrasted starkly with the realities of working class
families, where the work and financial contribution of child labor was
essential to the family’s survival. This conflict is assessed in two periods,
from 1852-1871 when public schooling gradually developing, and 1872-1911, when
school attendance was mandatory. Lassonde asserts that the element of
compulsory attendance was the most controversial aspect of changes in schooling,
as it came directly at the expense of working-class ideals of reciprocity in
the family power structure. He describes
compulsory education as, “coercive, altruistic, invasive, disinterested,
fearful, and idealistic” (33).
Lassonde posits that with schooling
comes a change in the perception of time. He insists that truancy and vagrancy
came to be viewed as the social “vice” of idleness. Indeed, the middle-class
ideal stressed only two ways children should spend their time, either in school
or at work. This concern over idleness spurred the compulsory attendance
movement. Middle-class reformers failed
to mention, however, that these periods of “idleness” were often the by-product
of circumstance. Work shortages in particular fed the perception of youth
wasted in idleness. Working-class kids were especially vulnerable to
wage-cutting and peer competition, just like their fathers (40).
In early schooling there were many
instances of casual attendance. This was often due to episodic withdrawal based
on the need of the family. Working-class parents were eager for their children
to receive an education as long as doing so did not unduly restrict their
family income. For working class kids, youth was a training ground in how to
make a living. Leaving school to join the workforce became a basic rite of
passage.
Lassonde details the background and
ideology of Italian working-class immigrants, demonstrating how the
middle-class educational ethos threatened their cultural ideals. To the Italian
working-class, he observes, the school “trampled on the traditional rights of
parents to cultivate in their children conduct and attitudes most dear to them”
(55). Indeed, they dreaded the
consequences of this change. Lassonde’s point is demonstrated in the structure
of the Southern Italian immigrant family. Its view of childhood differed
substantially from the middle-class sentimental ideal. Italian parents saw the family as an economic
collective. Forced schooling, as experienced by Italian parents, taught the
wrong lessons about obligations. The traditional structure was based on the
support of the entire family unit. Children from a young age were prepared to
follow in their father’s profession, and couples generally had many kids in
order to sustain their family – given that the wages of their children was a
major financial contribution. Italian parents believed the ideals that the
schools promulgated failed to reinforce their values by not instilling the
custom of reciprocity. Lassonde stresses that the American schools were
challenging the entire way of life of Italian immigrants, and this conflict and
culture shock often bred alienation and shame. Italians were unaccustomed to
the sharp division of childhood and adulthood, as their societal structure was
far more fluid. Lassonde argues that “schooling drew the culture of home life
into direct confrontation with the ‘official’ culture of the host society over
an extended period of time” (82).
Likewise, Lassonde maintains, school
and social interactions among students were influential in assimilation.
Children found that the values of their peer group shaped them more than those
of their family. Constant contact with
mass culture also eroded familial authority. Lassonde demonstrates this assimilative
process in his analysis of the shift from courtship to dating. Though arranging
a marriage in Italian neighborhoods had traditionally been somewhat impersonal,
and based on the family’s interests as a collective, the new model gave youth
far more agency. Dating emerged as a by-product of increased attendance in high
school. The kids who left school early were more likely to uphold Italian
traditions, whereas those who continued in high school garnered an appreciation
for the Anglo-American conception of romantic love. Lassonde claims this is
typified by the fact that Italian high-school graduates were more likely to
marry out of their ethnic group.
Since most immigrant neighborhoods
had more homogeneous populations, the numerous local elementary schools
generally did not challenge old world perceptions. Lassonde notes, however, that
as the age of compulsory attendance increased, kids had to leave their self-segregating
neighborhoods to attend comprehensive schools located in downtown
Lassonde demonstrates that the rise
in the age of compulsory attendance coincided with a diminishing youth job
market. As the legal age to work rose to 16 by the 1930s, the cultural impact
of universal school attendance increased dramatically. Lassonde argues that
this point constituted a liminal moment, when youth became a distinct and
universal life stage. This transition was cemented by the popularization of
high school. Secondary school became the normative teenage experience and
morphed into a mass institution. As the high school experience grew more
typical, school curricula became tracked. Though tracking occasionally
facilitated success and social mobility for some students, others were trapped
in inappropriate tracks. The new
curriculum also provided of little value in vocational training.
Parents’ perspectives evolved over time as well, as
they put their faith in the idea that school would enhance their child’s future
earnings or that high school was a necessary “credential” to assure one’s
chances in the job market. Indeed, Lassonde implies as much in his title: Learning to Forget. Ultimately, Lassonde
concludes, the democratization of schooling caused parents to “surrender their
faith in the past for the promise of a more affluent future for their children,
however obscure the path and indefinite the attainment secured in the bargain”
(187). Past customs, according to which parents defined the values and career
choices of their children, fell by the wayside. Kids learned to integrate
themselves into the new mass culture through school, and especially through
their peer group interactions. “Families,” Lassonde explains, “began to relinquish
the ability to define the young person’s identity, aspirations, obligations,
and values in the belief that they were exchanging the power to mold
adolescents for the vague prospect of upward social mobility” (188). By the
Second World War, the fears of