Schools at War, February 1945: the teacher as democracy's secret weapon

Schools at War for February 1945 is the cover of a quarterly war savings news bulletin for teachers, with a color photograph by Nicholas Muray. A teacher in a red dress and a boy in a blue shirt read at a desk, and the cover calls the teacher democracy's secret weapon (NAID 515356).

A classroom photograph on a savings bulletin

The object is a bulletin cover filed with the posters. A color photograph shows a teacher in a red dress and a boy in a blue shirt reading an open book together at a desk, with a wall map and a globe behind them. One readable book spine says "Two Sailors". The picture sits under the bulletin's title, and a slogan names the teacher's place in the war.

SCHOOLS AT WAR

FEBRUARY 1945

QUARTERLY WAR SAVINGS NEWS BULLETIN FOR TEACHERS

THE TEACHER—DEMOCRACY'S SECRET WEAPON

[imprint: Photo by Nicholas Muray]

A bulletin that does not name its publisher

The cover calls itself a quarterly war savings news bulletin for teachers. It does not name the office that published it, and the archive records that the issuer is not named on the cover. The photograph is credited to Nicholas Muray. FRAME sets the issuer type to "Mixed", the audience to "Domestic public" and the purpose to "Persuade or win support". The National Archives holds it in Record Group 44, World War II Posters.

The classroom as a front

FRAME tags glittering generalities and transfer: the slogan attaches a wartime role and a large, abstract value to ordinary teaching. Nothing in the transcribed text names a price. The teacher is reading with a child. The war enters through the words "AT WAR" and "SECRET WEAPON", and through the subtitle, which tells the teacher what the bulletin is for: war savings.

That is where a careful reader stops. Praising teachers costs nothing. A bulletin that praises them to recruit them as savings agents in their own classrooms is asking for something more. This site's war bonds hub says the Treasury's Schools-at-War program "turned classrooms into sales points", that children "were sold to" and "made the sellers", and asks how voluntary a purchase is when it is made in front of a class that is keeping score. This cover carries the program's name but not its sponsor's. The records the hub cites show citations and badges and no penalties.

The archive holds other Schools at War material, including a 1941 bulletin and a 1943 sheet on art education, neither yet with a page here. The Roosevelt administration essay names the Treasury as the department that ran the bond drives.