Immigrant Arrivals

On the website Education World is a course for students aged between 6 and 12 aimed at teaching children about the immigration to the United States. This course is of particular interest not just because of the statistical knowledge the students gain from it, but also by learning from emotive experiences. The course includes subjects such as geography, as it is comparing the arrival of immigrants at Ellis Island to those who arrived at Angel Island.

Throughout the project, the objective is that:

Students will learn about the variety of experiences that greeted immigrants to the United States during the first quarter of the 20th century and develop an understanding of the factors related to their experiences.

The project asks students to find evidence of ethnic, cultural, economic and social backgrounds of the immigrants and therefore discover what their pull to the United States was. In doing so, they should learn about the journey and the arrival, but also about how the immigrants then lived in the United States.

By asking students in the early stages of their academic years to think about the experiences of immigrants in the 20th century, schools are offering an education on the diverse culture within the United States and how it came to be the way it is today. Therefore, the different backgrounds of people are taken into account by the students and they are educated on the variety of nationalities within America. The research on immigrant experiences is essential for understanding discrimination that was felt towards different ethnic backgrounds and will thus give the students a wider understanding of people of the world and the origins of their own country.

The project appears to have been created in order to educate the youth of America on issues of culture and the idea of the 'Mosaic' representation of their country. The interactive aspects of the project engages children by allowing them to browse archives of people that actually passed through Angel or Ellis Island, and shows a balanced view of the expectations of immigrants and whether or not they were met upon arrival.