Tulsa 1942: LIFE, Eisenstaedt visit Tulsa high schools

A serendipitous find: LIFE magazine's April 13, 1942, issue included a six-page story about high school education in Tulsa, with photos by Alfred Eisenstaedt. The story, "Tulsa High Schools: They Are Making Progressive Education Work," highlighted non-traditional classes and teaching techniques at three of Tulsa's four high schools -- Central, Daniel Webster, and Will Rogers:

• Central's rhythmic dance class for girls and water safety class
• Student custodians washing Central's front steps for 25 cents per hour (attn: Newt Gingrich)
• Central's cooperative education program: Students split time between a job and school, where they study work related subjects. The two examples given are Raymond Stout, who works as a machinist for W. C. Norris, a maker of oilfield equipment, and Ida Bess Giboney, who sells lingerie at Vandever's department store.
• A "block period" at Central: Three teachers of different subjects work with a group of students on different aspects their assignments, using magazines and newspapers instead of textbooks. "Artificial barriers between subject areas [are] abolished."
• Webster's Family Life class: Students provide full-day daycare for three- and four-year-olds.
• Webster's sewing class
• Will Rogers's commercial art class
• An odd-looking flag salute at a Will Rogers High assembly
• Central students lobbying the Tulsa Parks Commissioner

And, according to the caption, Central student Charlene Houston had a figure problem and had to do exercises with her pelvis in a vise to fix it.

There are many more photos from Eisenstaedt's visit in Google's image archive, above and beyond those that made it to print. Unfortunately and surprisingly, Google doesn't make it easy to search by the photographer and location tags attached to each image, and there's no way to get to a complete set of related photos. Best thing to do is to click on Miss Houston and then click on thumbnails of related photos. Where I could find them, I've linked my description (above) of photos that appeared in the story to the online image.

The story itself hints that as early as 70 years ago, the Tulsa school district was beginning to abandon basics for "progressive" fads. Which is not to say that these students were poorly educated. I suspect that, by the end of 8th grade, these students would have received as much education in the basics of math, grammar, and history as today's students get by the time they graduate.