Accessibility links
Education We've been to school. We know how education works. Right? In fact, many aspects of learning — in homes, at schools, at work and elsewhere — are evolving rapidly, along with our understanding of learning. Join us as we explore how learning happens.

Education

Lost & Found Sound

LOST AND FOUND SOUND: Mental Hygiene Films

The years just after the Second World War saw the advent of a new genre of classroom films: "social guidance" or "attitude enhancement" films -- we'll call them "mental hygiene" films. Young people in schools across America saw films with titles like "Dating Dos and Don'ts," "Mind Your Manners," "Are You Popular?" and, "Narcotics: Pit of Despair." Topics included table manners, etiquette, fitting in, posture, dating, highway safety, substance abuse, and juvenile delinquency. They were tools of social engineering, made to shape the values and attitudes of an entire generation of American kids. More than three-thousand of these films were made over nearly three decades. Now, fewer than half of them survive. Ken Smith has written a new book called "Mental Hygiene: Classroom Films, 1945-1970". He'll be our tour guide through this Lost and Found Sound report on this funny, fascinating, and largely forgotten genre of American filmmaking.

LOST AND FOUND SOUND: Mental Hygiene Films

Only Available in Archive Formats.

Lost & Found Sound

Lost And Found Sound: Diamonds In The Dungheap

The Vincent Voice Library at Michigan State University houses recorded speeches, performances, lectures, interviews, and broadcasts by over 50,000 persons over the last 100 years. NPR's Don Gonyea took a tour of the library and talked to its collector. Maurice Crane presides over a vast repository of the recorded voice. We learn that among the mass of recordings, there are treasures and trash.

Lost And Found Sound: Diamonds In The Dungheap

Only Available in Archive Formats.

Lost & Found Sound

Extinct Tongues

A linguist in Flagstaff, Arizona, Bonny Sands, told us about her colleague from South Africa, Tony Traill. Traill took some old wax cylinders and documented a lot of the now extinct languages of South Africa. He has now put out a CD copy of the original, which was recorded in 1936. We hear excerpts.

Extinct Tongues

Listen · 5:32
  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/3602394/47803" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">