Time to go back to school! The relaxing days of summer are giving way to busy schooldays for millions of children – and teachers – across the country, with many already at their desks and ready to tackle a new school year.
Photographers for the Farm Security Administration and Office of War Information traveled all over the country in the late 1930s and early 1940s, documenting American life with their cameras. In the course of this work, they snapped photos of schools and classrooms in rural communities and in cities, including one-room wooden schoolhouses and stately brick buildings. Students walking to school, hopping on the bus, enjoying recess and studying hard are all part of the stories about schooltime told by the photographs of this era. Take a look at “back to school” in the selection of photos below:
Grade school, San Augustine, Texas. Photo by Russell Lee, 1939 April. //hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/fsa.8a25899
Dead Ox Flat. Children get into school bus on a fall morning. Malheur County, Oregon. Photo by Dorothea Lange, 1939 Oct. //hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/fsa.8b35057
Washington, D.C. Class in the Banneker Junior High School. Photo by Marjory Collins, 1942 Mar. //hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/fsa.8d45065
Jacknife School, Gem County, Idaho. Eleven pupils, two of them children of families belonging to Ola self-help sawmill co-op. Photo by Dorothea Lange, 1939 Oct. //hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/fsa.8b35313
Schoolchildren on circular swing, San Augustine, Texas. Photo by Russell Lee, 1938 Sept.-Oct. //hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/fsa.8a25893
School. Red House, West Virginia. Photo by Elmer Johnson, between 1935 and 1942. //hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/fsa.8b26981
Charlotte Court House, Virginia. Central High School. Social science class. Photo by Philip Bonn, 1943 June. //hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/fsa.8d31371
Painting class in school, Westmoreland Homesteads, Pennsylvania. Photo by Ben Shahn, 1937. //hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/fsa.8a17523
Tip Estes’ children boarding a school bus near Fowler, Indiana. Photo by Russell Lee, 1937 Apr. //hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/fsa.8b30308
New York, New York. Class in Public School Eight on King Street, discussing a book entitled “We love America,” brought to school by one of the pupils. Photo by Marjory Collins, 1943 Jan. //hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/fsa.8d24386
Farm children walking to one-room schoolhouse with lunch pails, Nebraska. Photo by John Vachon, 1938 Oct. //hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/fsa.8a03638
Learn More:
Rural school children, San Augustine County, Texas. Photo by John Vachon, 1943 April. //hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/fsac.1a35427
- Photographs in the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information (FSA/OWI) Collection were classified by subject matter. (Not all photos in the online collection have their classification recorded.) Explore the photos under these subjects:
- Read more about the FSA/OWI Subject Index, with links to the subjects in classification number order and alphabetically. A Picture This post delves deeply into this subject in Sampling Slices of the FSA/OWI Collection.
- Revisit earlier Picture This entries which focused on photographs of classrooms, exploring several images in detail and discussing visual literary techniques:
August 30, 2017 at 10:42 am
Where are the projects, grade with work comparison levels for poor quality school work comparison
Such as in Death at an early age, by Johnathan Kozol, 1963
August 31, 2017 at 11:36 am
I love these photos. Thanks for another wonderful post.
September 3, 2017 at 8:03 pm
lovely photos
i never attended a school as small as those in the photographs, but some of the clothing, the furnishings, and the first school bus brought a rush of memories.
and i grew up in india!
humans are more alike than different, something to remember in these difficult times.