Immigration and Schooling:

http://www.jstor.org/stable/3195657

Comparisons to the "good old days" when newcomers to the United States purportedly learned English effortlessly and without the aid of special programs cloud debates of the education of linguistic minority children. This article considers the historical realities of an urban community in two periods of high immigration (1890 to 1920 and 1970 to 1990) to point out the fallacies and fancies of those tales of the "golden past." Interviews with Latino community residents, longtime residents whose parents or grandparents immigrated to the community, and historical documentation provide the evidence for revising these misconceptions of the past and misinterpretations of the present.