Figure 1.--Here we see a griop of high-school students. The girls wear hair bows andwhite dresses., The boys wear suits. The cabinet card is undated and has no studio information. We can date it to the late-1900s decade because of the mount and the fact some of the boys are wearing knickers. (Kinickers began to become common in 1908.) We were not sure what the group here was. We thought they might be prize winners because of the huge bows and corsages, but think it was more likely that they were the enire senior class. Many American high schools were very small at the time. All we know for sure is that one of the girls is Sophia Roce.

We note some students wearing special decorative items. We just note them, we have never found anydescription of them. We think that these are graduation items. This means two different events. During the 19th and early-20th century, a realtively small numbrr of children attended secondary school. Most children attended eementary (primary) schools which by the late-19th century were normally schools with 8 year pograns called grades. Thus this was the primary graduation event for most Americans. At first these were the schools what most middle-class children completed, but by the turn-of the 20th century it was becoming increasingly common for working-class children to complete the 8-year program. Many of the immigrants that pured into America came from countries where public school schooling was much less advanced. (Which meant vrtually every country except Germany.) Thus 8th grade graduations were important into the early-20th century. We see the children dressed up with a range of decorative items. American secondary schools called high schools were becoming increasinly important. A turning point was the Depression, with no jobs to be had, more children continued their education. High school graduation was even more of an occassion. Academic attire began in the early European universities (12th century). American universities unlike British and Europen unversities stopped wearing academic dress in the early-19th century, perhaps part of the rejection of British trafitions after the Revolutiinary War, but caps and gowns were often retained by the facualty for special events and graduation for the students. We are not sure if secondary students also wore caps and giwn from the beginning, this was not the tradition in Britain. We do see American secondary school graduates dressing up and wearing elaborate decorations in the early-20h century, including bows, ribbons, and corsages (figure 1). We do not know if this was in place of caps and gowns.

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Created: 3:29 PM 4/6/2022
Last updated: 3:29 PM 4/6/2022