I imagine VCRs, DVDs, and Power Point have long taken their place, but does anyone else remember the slide shows from elementary school? The teacher would pop in a cassette, and at every beep, she would have to turn the dial to show the next slide. Do kids still get those in school?
Most of them would be about things like brushing your teeth properly, or avoiding big kids who smoked. Then in sixth grade, the one’s about bathing properly and having funny dreams would get shown (with boys and girls separated for the hour). I can’t remember many other details other than they were usually unintentionally funny. And they all seemed to be made in 1974. I imagine Richard Nixon in the depths of Watergate barking to his staff, “damnit we need a slide projector in every third grade class room! that shall be my legacy!”
Anyway, I wonder if there is a nostalgia market for old and rather obsolete educational materials out there…or if anyone has more specific memories.
Actually, there is something of a nostalgia market for “mental hygiene” films from the 50s and 60s. MST3K routinely skewered these films; there are two volumes of “shorts” on video. Also, Ken Smith wrote a nifty little book on the whole “mental hygiene” movement.
Sort of National Geographic culture sessions when we were about eleven, in an all girls school in the north of England in the very early 70s.
I’m sorry I have absolutely no idea where to start for a cite.
They were of foreign hot countries, and if Mr. Lambert was caught out he would have to flip two slides quickly so we didn’t dwell too long on brown, bare-breasted ladies outside their huts.
This was the repressed north, in repressed England. In the early seventies you had to give your best friend 5p (five pence) so you could see her big sister’s boobies, “by accident”. And we were all girls, heaven knows how the boys coped.
So at eleven, despite well-meaning health education, Mr. Lambert was giving us girls a sort of early tease into a micro-second mystery of fully-grown breasts.
It was all rather exciting.
As to the nostalgia side of things: well, I’ve never thought about it before but I think they might creep into techno-kitsch these days. And I’m a big fan of kitsch.
I’ve been reminiscing to myself about these sorts of things recently. I remember back in elementary school we’d have “movie day” once a month. We’d all gather in the auditorium and watch a variety of edu-tainment movies. These I remember far more vividly than the filmstrips watched during classes.
The movie that remains foremost in my mind was a film of the book “The Five Chinese Brothers”. Not at all animated, just a “Reading Rainbow” style narrated film of pages from the book. I dimly recall there might have been some others like this, perhaps “Madeline” and maybe “Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile.” Oh, and definitely a edgily-illustrated “Story of John Henry”.
But we also saw some Disney 'toons. Not features, of course, or even Mickey-Donald-Goofy cartoons. But I remember “Johnny Appleseed” and “Paul Bunyan”. And, in particular, some sort of animated “History of Music” starring cavemen that “Toot, Whistle, Pluck, and Boom”, showing how all instruments derived from these basics. Quite hilarious, actually. I’ve no idea where this film could be found nowadays…
The only filmstrips I remember were obviously from well before the Nixon administration. I remember girls with bobbed hair & dresses, boys wearing ironed, cuffed jeans and plaid shirts, sporting crewcuts and riding bicycles. The grown-up men wore suits & hats, and the cars put it circa mid-1950s. And the filmstrips all had a washed-out magenta-ish, 30-year-old look.
BTW - thanks for the Prelinger link. That open archive is amazing, especially for nostalgia buffs like me.
It’s a little sad to think that no more generations of children will have the experience of watching a filmstrip—of seeing a flat picture, listening to some narration and bad music, and actually having to sort of use your imagination to bring the story to life.
The film strips I remember weren’t mental hygiene; they were mostly stories, pseudo-history and tall tales. I remember watching film strips on Bigfoot (he was big in the mid-70s) and UFOs, as well as Johnny Appleseed, Paul Bunyan, et al. I remember in particular a horrifying story about an Indian who turned into a snake: there was a slide showing his legs fusing together and becoming scaly, while terrified moaning played on the soundtrack. That was probably one of the scarier things I had seen in my life up til then. I wish I could see it again!
I wonder how one would go about tracking down old filmstrips? Is anyone making effort to archive them, or at least information about them?
I remember back in elementary school we used to watch these films put out by the Bell System of all people. They were science education films that featured an older “scientist” and another guy who was (IIRC) a reporter or something. The reporter would show up asking the scientist about some topic and he would explain it. The films mixed live action and animation and they would do things like contact greek gods when discussing weather or an anthromorphic heart when talking about anatomy. Anyone else remember these?
The Bell System <boop> made several educational movies featuring <boop> Dr. Science, played by the <boop> late Frank Baxter.
<boop>
You may remember such films as <boop> Hemo, the Magnificent, Our <boop> Mr. Sun, <boop> The Unchained Goddess and <boop> The Strange Case of the Cosmic Rays. <boop>
<boop>
Other films in this series were Gateway to the Mind <boop> which described senses, and the Alphabet Conspiracy. <boop> Threads of Life introduced <boop> the concept of DNA and <boop> About Time.
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Bell Labs was able to wrangle some serious talent to produce <boop> these films. Some of them were directed by Frank Capra <boop> and portions were <boop> animated by Fritz Freleng <boop>
Thanks for pointing them out.