I like the page, Eugene! Do you know if there are other "albums" like this
on the Web? Were the photos taken for display in the school, as family
keepsakes, or for the local press, or... ? I have an envelope of old school
photos from my own days as pupil. One of them (from 4th grade, -58 or -59)
shows us sitting in benches in a fashion that looks a lot like your second
grade class, if not even more cramped -- but that picture was taken in a
classroom where they had pushed the furniture together like that for the
picture-taking! Also there are 29 smiling kids :-)
The reference I keep giving in this context --
Karen Jones and Kevin Williamson, 1979. Birth of the schoolroom. *Ideology
and Consciousnes* 6: 59-110.
-- studies the dialectical transformation of educational discourse and
classroom architecture in the 19th century: after the huge (church-size)
classrooms of the monitorial system schools, oriented to memorization,
came a pedagogy oriented towards formation of dispositions within the
children and genuine understanding: the teacher's love for his pupils
played a fundamental role in the formation of these dispositions. Separate
classrooms, where age-grouped children were "walled in" and seated in rows
facing the teacher, made the necessary undisturbed relationship with the
teacher possible.
Remember to love thy neighbour!
Eva