Morality Play

Dating: Do's and Don'ts. Keep Off the Grass. Highways of Agony. If you're older than 30, chances are you remember these short educational movies or one of the estimated 3,000 more like them. "Social guidance" films flickered to life in postwar classrooms as progressive educators looked to technology to teach increasingly independent-minded teenagers to dress neatly, duck and cover, and drive safely.

Ten years ago, writer Ken Smith rediscovered these classroom films as an editor for the Comedy Channel (now Comedy Central) in New York City; his job was to dice and splice them into 30-second, humorous vignettes that the channel ran before commercials. Smith became convinced that the campy creations offer more insight into American education than meets the eye, and he recently published a book on the subject, Mental Hygiene: Classroom Films 1945 to 1970 (Blast Books). In late January, Smith and Rick Prelinger, a preservationist whose archives is the final resting place for many of these forgotten films, fired up the 16mm projector for a social guidance film retrospective at the American Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, New York. The two-day event drew the largest audience in the museum's history—more people showed up for it than for a Stanley Kubrick festival hosted by the movie director himself.

Smith recently talked with Managing Editor Samantha Stainburn about social guidance films, past and present.