http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/jwcrawford/BECh1.htm
└...German-speaking Americans were operating schools in their mother tongue as early as 1694 in Philadelphia."<2> Sometimes bilingual and sometimes not, German-language schooling prevailed until the early twentieth century, notwithstanding periodic attempts to replace it with English as the medium of instruction.
In the 1750s Benjamin Franklin, a politician frustrated by his inability to influence German-speaking voters, promoted one such project under the auspices of the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge. All went smoothly until German parents learned that linguistic assimilation, not religious instruction, was the real purpose of these schools; whereupon they refused to enroll their children. Soon after, the Pennsylvania Germans helped to vote Franklin out of the colonial assembly."<3> As a pamphleteer Franklin expressed alarmist concerns about bilingualism that have a familiar ring today. Citing the increased use of German in public situations, he predicted that interpreters would soon be necessary in the Assembly, to tell one half of our Legislators what the other half say; In short unless the stream of their importation could be turned from this to other Colonies ... [Germans] will soon so out number us, that all the advantages we have will not in My Opinion be able to preserve our language, and even our Government will become precarious.⌠