Term: Bennett Law
Definition:
An 1889 law that required all Wisconsin schools, public and parochial, to teach certain subjects only in the English language. Viewed by German Catholics and Lutherans as an attack not only on their parochial schools but also on their language and culture.
The full text of the law is given in chapter 519 of the 1889 Wisconsin session laws. Section 5, the most controversial section, reads, "Section 5. No school shall be regarded as a school, under this act, unless there shall be taught therein, as part of the elementary education of children, reading, writing, arithmetic and United States history, in the English language." The full text is available at Google Books.
View more information elsewhere at wisconsinhistory.org. View a related article at Wisconsin Magazine of History Archives.
[Source: The History of Wisconsin, IV: The Progressive Era, 1893-1914 (Madison, 1973-1998); The Laws of Wisconsin... Passed at the Biennial Session of the Legislature of 1889... (Madison, 1889): 729-733.]
