Field Trip

Highschool students visit the Lincoln Memorial in 1942. The caption accompanying this photo says these students were chosen for their "intellectual alertness" and rewarded with a week-long trip to Washington, D.C.

Photo by Marjory Collins. [American Memory link]

Missouri Umbrella

Taken in a school in Missouri, 1938.

Photo by Russell Lee. [American Memory link]

Wooly

Sheep at an agricultural college in Texas. January 1942.

Photo by Arthur Rothstein. [American Memory link]

Baby Bull

A male cow - also called a bull calf - at a college in Texas. 1942.

Photo by Arthur Rothstein. [American Memory link]

First Grade

Grade one students with their teacher. Alabama, 1939. (click photo for a larger version)

Photo by Marion Post Wolcott. [American Memory link]

Recess

Seven shoeless girls and (a piglet) in a school playground in Georgia, 1938. Click image for a larger version.

Photo by John Vachon. [American Memory link]

Target Practice

Washington D.C. - October 1943. The caption accompanying this photo reads: "Walter Spangenberg practicing with a rifle at Woodrow Wilson High School." These days, metal detectors attempt to keep guns out of schools.

Photo by Esther Bubley. [American Memory link]

To the Rescue

A highschool in New York city, 1942. Students devoted one day a week of their English class to "war activities." Here they're learning/practicing first aid.

Photo by William Perlitch. [American Memory link]

Extracurricular

It isn't clear whether young people would normally be recruited for such tasks in heavily agricultural 1940s American - or whether labor was in short supply due to the war.

At any rate, this series of photos shows hundreds of co-ed high-school students being trucked into Idaho pea fields to help with the harvest.

Photo by Russell Lee, 1941. [American Memory link]