It was left for my father to teach me, or for me to dig it out for myself.

There was absolutely no indication on the part of teacher or principal of responsibility for seeing that a foreign-born boy should acquire the English language correctly.

I was taught as if I were American-born, and, of course, I was left dangling in the air, with no conception of what I was trying to do.
My father worked with me evening after evening; I plunged my young mind deep into the bewildering confusions of the language--and no one realizes the confusions of the English language as does the foreign-born--and got what I could through these joint efforts.

But I gained nothing from the much-vaunted public-school system which the United States had borrowed from my own country, and then had rendered incompetent--either by a sheer disregard for the thoroughness that makes the Dutch public schools the admiration of the world, or by too close a regard for politics.
Thus, in her most important institution to the foreign-born, America fell short.

And while I am ready to believe that the public school may have increased in efficiency since that day, it is, indeed, a question for the American to ponder, just how far the system is efficient for the education of the child who comes to its school without a knowledge of the first word in the English language.