ABSTRACT
Howard Weisz was one of the most scrupulous and diligent graduate students of the author. This chapter describes the careful scholarship and thorough research that characterized Weisz’s work. It focuses on the development of parochial schools. The chapter suggests how deeply American the parochial schools in fact were; that is, how much they incorporated, consciously or unconsciously, the patterns of American culture. As such, the chapter illustrates an important aspect of American pluralism. Parochial schools patronized by Irish-Americans were, from the start, American in that they taught in English and made efforts to instill loyalty to the United States in their pupils. But to the enemies of the parochial schools, and even to some who supported them, this Americanism had to be measured against the practices of the public schools. The chapter shows that the American Irish who worked to create parochial schools, were, in fact, responsible for making them increasingly like public schools.
