“Spare the brush and spoil the TEETH”: Schoolgirls in a dental hygiene class are taught to hold a toothbrush. This photo was taken in 1908.

Staying in settlements

This photo, taken on Feb. 8. 1910, shows children from School No. 2 in the Buffalo, N.Y., Italian district. Many of these kids spent their summer vacations in the canning and fruit-picking settlements where their parents went to work during the season.

Publicizing their plight

Children in rural Williams County, N.D., are shown in their classroom in 1937. The photographer, Russell Lee, was employed by the Farm Security Administration, a government effort to fight poverty.

Off to work

This 1915 photo shows a two-room schoolhouse called Knearl in Brush, Colo. Taken seven weeks into the school year, only five pupils were present out of 100, as many children were off working on beet farms.

Spoonful of oil

Children in an Arkansas nursery school are fed cod liver oil in this photo, taken in 1938, shortly before World War II. During the war, children were given the supplement to boost their meager diets.

Barefoot pupils

Children study in a rural school in San Augustine County, Texas, in 1939. The boy on the left has hookworm, which infested this poverty-stricken region.

In the attic

Lewis Wickes Hine photographed children at Dotheboys Hall in Hunstville, Ala., in 1913. The school was tucked away upstairs over a store. Hine described the scene:

“Equipped with antique, dilapidated benches and chairs. The lessons begin at 6 a.m. and last for six hours, and these children who attend in the morning go into the mill in the afternoon and vice versa for the required eight weeks, which the law specifies. Taking everything into consideration it shows what travesty vocational guidance may become…”

Gather ’round

Elementary schoolchildren gather to watch the teacher write on a blackboard in Washington, D.C.

Wartime image

Rural schoolchildren in San Augustine County, Texas, are shown in this photo, taken in 1943. The photographer, John Vachon, worked for the Farm Security Administration and the Office of War Information.

The dunce

Children read various crime stories in their classroom, while one boy wears a dunce cap and stands at the blackboard in this 1906 photo.