1950s Educational Films That Taught Children How to Live
The hockey style of 1950s educational films makes them thesubject of derision today . But the most interesting thing is that they were preemptively ridiculed decades before they peaked.
Welcome to Retro Week , where we light up the flux condenser and introduce you to the 1950s know-how of everything from making casseroles to building fallout shelters to joys for kids to relax and play with trash.
In 1968, a commissioned retrospective of Encyclopedia Britannica Films , one of the leading companies behind these black-and-white educational films, quoted a New Yorker snobbish reaction to the genre’s dawn in 1929:
We are worried about the obsessive fear of living in a completely preserved civilization, where everyone will look like Clara Bow and talk like Eddie Leonard. While not questioning Mr. Fox’s noble intentions, we nevertheless want to know if radio stations are going to approach science and education the way they did to life. We want to know if they intend to give the truth a happy ending!
Although this quote was transformed into a bland “we of course showed them”, in retrospect it predicted everything we thought of these films: that they are silly, simplistic, and seek to fit all of America into the same … (both white and Christian) mold.
For decades EBF (first as ERPI Classroom Films) and competitors such as Centron Corporation and Coronet Films have produced educational films for classroom display. They covered traditional school subjects such as crustacean biology and civil war . But the films that loom in public memory are the ones that taught children how to behave: how to maintain hygiene, social skills, and planning. There are both types in the Prelinger archive: there are 41 Centron films in the collection and 223 Encyclopdia Britannica Films . Here are some of the best – and what they tell you about the time period.
In Health: Your Posture, a girl named Adrelin has such bad posture that the mirror in the bedroom beckons her to. The film blames poor posture for all medical problems and recommends solutions such as regular rest and quality footwear. In Hair & Nail Care, Stanley the boy learns hygiene tips to keep all of his dead cells and not become a monster with shaggy claws. So far, so good; although these videos are outdated, they teach us habits that we still value today.
But outdated social roles hang over even the most innocent of these films, and most of the time they rush right into the center. Q Why Study Industrial Arts? a boy learns how a workshop class prepares him for the life of an engineer, builder, or architect. Q Why Study Home Economics? a girl learns how a home computer will prepare her for life as a housewife. (The latter speaks verbally about college prep for girls who don’t get married “right away.”)
Thanksgiving shows what middle-class Americans should be grateful for, even in tough times, through the eyes of a mechanic family who can’t afford a Thanksgiving turkey. The list of family blessings includes material goods and comforts, as well as a long list of American values such as free speech, privacy, and the right to choose a job. The family is white.
The adults got their own cinematic recommendations from companies like Sutherland Productions. 1949 educational cartoon ” Why Play Leap Frog?” tells workers that wages will match prices if only workers increase productivity – no blame for owners and managers if you can’t afford your company’s own product! Commissioned by the Chamber of Commerce, The Chamber of Commerce caricature, It’s All It’s All , portrays the 40-hour workweek as a natural result of American capitalism, not the result of government regulation and the protracted actions of workers that corporations fight at every turn.
Films for school use are more widespread today; Educational TV offers its own views and millions of educational videos are popping up on YouTube. Now that manufacturing demands are nothing more than a computer and a smartphone, the classroom can enjoy a prospect that is not as widespread and well-funded. Of course, half a century later, even the best of them may look ridiculous.