These films embodied the voice and value-system of American parents in the first decades of the baby boom. To be commercially attractive to schools and libraries throughout the nation, school films in the 1940s and 1950s could not challenge social mores. They were not instruments of social transformation. Still, despite their simplistic contexts, school films communicated socially-responsible messages. And these messages are still being taught in homes and schools many decades later.
Children still require instruction in proper table manners and the fundamentals of good grooming.
The drug problem has only worsened since the 1950s requiring even greater adult intervention than the old films proposed. So, laugh at their superficial gloss, as one might snicker at clothing styles worn in earlier times. But beneath the surface, much is unchanged. Laughing at school films from our youth does not mean they were wrong-or that we have solved the problems they recognized. Style changes, but social dilemmas endure.