Figure 1.--This is a primary school in Tisnov, Czechoslovakia, taken in the late-1920s. Tisnov is a picturesque, affluent town where people lived very well before the second World War. The children here seem to me very mocely dressed. They look to be about 7-8 years old. The boys wear an unusual variety of dress-up clothes. Some boys wear suits with short trousers and long stockings. Others wear knee socks (white knee socks seem to have been especially popular). Still other boys, only a minority, are wearing long trousers. One boy, second row on the extreme left, wears a white sailor suit with long white stockings. They are wearing white arm bands and one seems to hold a scrolled certificate of some sort. The white arm bands are sometimes associated with first communion. Czechoslovakia, of course, was a mainly Catholic country This Catholic even seems to be a public school event. We see the boys' lady teacher at the left. |
