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“The New Generation”: Mental Hygiene and the Portrayals of Children by the National Film Board of Canada, 1946–1967

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Brian J. Low
Brian J. Low*
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia (UBC) in 1999
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Extract

That is the achievement of the psychologists. In our own society they are very kind, and do everything for our own good. The tales of what they do elsewhere are rather terrifying.

—Hilda Neatby

So Little for the Mind (1953)

Documenting the impact of the mental hygiene movement has been problematical for historians. The hygienists operated in the realm of mass psychology and social relations, within the “mentalities” of children—particularly of the postwar generation—who have left little observable evidence of changing social attitudes and relationships resulting from changes to mass child-rearing and schooling practices. The influence of the movement upon parenting literature and curricular documents may be readily observed in postwar baby books, magazines, newspapers, radio scripts, and films, as well as in the changing language of educational theorists and practitioners. But as to seeing the actual effects of this material upon any society, documentary evidence has remained elusive.

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 43 , Issue 4 , Winter 2003 , pp. 540 - 570
Copyright
Copyright © 2003 by the History of Education Society 

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References

1 For an extensive account of popular and educational psychological discourse in postwar Canada see Mona Gleason, Normalizing the Ideal: Psychology, Schooling, and the Family in Postwar Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999). For a discussion of the implications of language change and educational reform see Sol Cohen, “Language and History: A Perspective on School Reform Movements and Change in Education,” in his Challenging Orthodoxies: Toward a New Cultural History of Education (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 1999).Google Scholar

2 It seems doubtful whether NFB filmmakers could truly ‘mirror’ Canadian society even if they wished to. And yet, used in its classical sense, the mirror metaphor precisely characterizes NFB productions. In her outstanding monograph, The Glass of Form: Mirroring Structures from Chaucer to Skelton (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1991), Anna Torti, a scholar of English literature, takes note of the function of the mirror (speculum) as employed in medieval texts: i.e., providing neither a true image of a subject solely (“what is”) nor merely an ideal one (“what ought to be”), but rather the movement of one to the other—thus proffering both at once. As it was with the medieval speculum, so too it is with the NFB documentary.Google Scholar

3 From 1939 to 1950, the mandate of the NFB read somewhat differently: “to help Canadians in all parts of Canada to understand the ways of living and the problems of Canadians in other parts.”Google Scholar

4 For discussions of Spock's influence on post-war child-rearing practices in Canada see Katherine Arnup, Education for Motherhood: Advice for Mothers in Twentieth-Century Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994) and Doug Owram, Born at the Right Time: A History of the Baby-Boom Generation (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996). For discussions on William Blatz and Samuel Laycock, see Jocelyn Raymond, The Nursery World of Dr. Blatz (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991) as well as Gleason in her Normalizing the Ideal. Google Scholar

5 For a first hand account of the Little Red School House, with an introduction by John Dewey, see Agnes De Lima, The Little Red School House (New York: Macmillan, 1948). For a more concise description of the activities at the school, as well as the politics involved, see Sol Cohen, Progressives and Urban School Reform (New York: Bureau of Publications, Teachers College, 1964).Google Scholar

6 Stated succinctly, the mental hygiene intent in American public schools was to make teachers less rigid, moralistic, punitive, and authoritarian, and to make students happier, more successful, and above all else, more sociable. In Canadian public schools, the intent was similar—that is, to build in students sound emotional habits, strong personalities, and good social relationships through less authoritarian teaching practices and greater emphasis on satisfying children's needs for belonging, social approval, and self-esteem.Google Scholar

7 So firmly entrenched did mental hygiene thinking become in the 1930s that, according to Cohen, the National Committee for Mental Hygiene (NCMH) was able to co-opt the Progressive Education Association (PEA) to make it a “movement organization.” See Sol Cohen, “The Mental Hygiene Movement, The Development of Personality and the School: The Medicalization of American Education,” History of Education Quarterly, 23: (Summer 1983): 136–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Canadian children born in 1946 began their public schooling by 1953. It was a sine qua non that children who were reared to be mentally healthy during the first six or seven years of their life should enter a school environment where mental health was of equal concern.Google Scholar

9 Gleason, Normalizing the Ideal. Google Scholar

10 As Donald Fisher observes in his Fundamental Development of the Social Sciences: Rockefeller Philanthropy and the United States Social Science Research Council (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993), 14: “By the turn of the century, ‘science’ and ‘scientist’ had become the most legitimate knowledge labels in North American society. During this century, the primary route for increasing the power and raising the status of knowledge has been to make it scientific.”Google Scholar

11 As Gesell wrote, “Liberty is the life principle of democracy, in the home as well as in the community.” Arnold Gesell, Frances Ilg, Louise Ames and Janet Learned, Infant and Child in the Culture of Today: The Guidance of Development in Home and Nursery School (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1943), 10. For discussions of Canadian advice manuals again see Arnup, Education for Motherhood and Cynthia R. Comacchio, “Nations are Built of Babies”: Saving Ontario's Mothers and Children, 1900–1940 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1993).Google Scholar

12 A useful primer on Rockefeller philanthropy and the “modern parent education movement” is Steven L. Schlossman's “Philanthropy and the Gospel of Child Development,” in History of Education Quarterly, 21 (Fall 1981): 275–299.Google Scholar

13 Gleason, Again see Normalizing the Ideal. Google Scholar

14 The full text of Gesell's acknowledgement reads, “We are most fundamentally indebted to the Rockefeller Foundation, which over a period of years has given generous long range support to the systematic investigations which underly the present work.” Gesell, Infant and Child in the Culture of Today, xi.Google Scholar

15 Present at Yale University (a bastion of the mental hygiene movement since 1909) and later at Columbia University, during Rockefeller Foundation (RF) and Commonwealth Fund campaigns at both institutions, was the young Benjamin Spock. Here is why, despite being “an over trained, repressed child of a strong-willed family,” he would choose to advise parents in the Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care (1946) that “what makes your child behave well is not threats or punishment but loving you for your agreeableness,” and similarly in the “Schools” subsection of his book, that a (“good teacher”) “knows that she can't teach democracy out of a book if she's acting like a dictator in person.” Spock's views on parenting and teaching were shaped less by his own experience and more by his immersion in the philosophy of mental hygiene while at Yale and Columbia from the mid-1920s through the 1930s. See Owram, Born at the Right Time, 48; and Benjamin Spock, M.D., The Pocket Book of Baby and Child Care (New York: Pocket Books, 1946), 260, 313.Google Scholar

16 Since it was so influential, one might well ask what were the intentions of the RF? An historical answer to that question may be inferred from Ida Tarbell's 1904 expose of John D. Rockefeller, Sr., The History of the Standard Oil Company (New York: McClure, Philips and Company, 1904). From the very outset of his company, Rockefeller sought to impose a uniform system, a ‘standard’ over the oil industry by eliminating competing systems or co-opting them. In the same way, from the 1920s onward, the foundation that bears his name sought to maintain social and economic order by bringing uniformity to social systems—developing a standard and then eliminating competing systems—including a uniform standard for child rearing.Google Scholar

17 Concerning the present/past tense dilemma that exists when writing a “cinemaethnography,” as does Dwight Hoover in his Middletown: The Making of a Documentary Film Series (Philadelphia: Harwood Academic Publisher, 1992), I use the historical present tense when I describe the action contained in a film and apologize to readers for any grammatical awkwardness that results.Google Scholar

18 Soundtrack from Supper's Ready, 8 min., 16mm, sound, b&w film, National Film Board of Canada [hereafter NFB], Montreal, QC, Canada, 1944.Google Scholar

19 Soundtrack from A Friend for Supper, 11 min., 16mm, sound, b&w film, NFB, 1944.Google Scholar

20 Soundtrack from Tomorrow's Citizens, 10 min., 16mm, sound, b&w film, NFB, 1947; Lessons in Living, 22 min., 16mm, sound, b&w film, NFB, 1944.Google Scholar

21 Soundtrack from The Children from Overseas, 12 min., 16mm, sound, b&w film, NFB, 1940; Soundtrack from Out Beyond Town, 11 min., 16mm, sound, b&w film, NFB, 1948. It is of interest to note that “formalist” educational practices are most often found in film productions in which the primary focus of the filmmaker is not education. In the film The Children from Overseas for example, the school scene is incidental to the larger purpose of the documentary: i.e., to illustrate aspects of the lives of British refugee children. Likewise, in the rural production Out Beyond Town the object of the documentary is to persuade rural viewers toward improvements in social hygiene rather than to persuade them toward changes in rural education. In both these films, in which pedagogical issues are of secondary importance, the classroom pedagogy is formalist. This formula holds true in other domestic films of this era as well: in particular, the educational scenes in films such as What Makes Us Grow (1943) and A Friend for Supper. Google Scholar

22 To judge from work by Neil Sutherland and others, this was not strictly the case with adult-child relations in Canadian society. However, in Vancouver, Canada, during this era, Sutherland writes that “most parents continued to exert a very considerable measure of control over their children's social relations” and that “children … moved easily from the control of their families into the control of the school.” Neil Sutherland, “‘Everyone seemed happy in those days': The Culture of Childhood in Vancouver Between the 1920s and the 1960s,” in Jean Barman, Neil Sutherland, & J. Donald Wilson, eds., Children, Teachers & Schools in the History of British Columbia (Calgary: Detselig Enterprises, 1995), 82, 86.Google Scholar

23 Soundtrack from Four Families, 59 min., 16mm, sound, b&w film, NFB, 1959. MacNeil was likely referring to Philip Wylie's Generation of Vipers (New York: Rinehart, 1955).Google Scholar

24 Soundtrack from The Pony, 29 min., 16mm, sound, b&w film, NFB, 1955.Google Scholar

25 The best account of Blatz's career may be found in Jocelyn Raymond, The Nursery World of Dr. Blatz (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991).Google Scholar

26 Soundtrack from What's On Your Mind?, 10 min., 16mm, sound, b&w film, NFB, 1946.Google Scholar

27 Soundtrack from What's On Your Mind? Google Scholar

28 Soundtrack from The Feeling of Rejection, 21 min., 16mm, sound, b&w film, NFB, 1947.Google Scholar

29 Soundtrack from The Feeling of Hostility, 31 min., 16mm, sound, b&w film, NFB, 1948.Google Scholar

30 Soundtrack from Over-Dependency, 31 min., 16mm, sound, b&w film, NFB, 1949.Google Scholar

31 Soundtrack from Know Your Baby, 9 min., 16mm, sound, b&w film, NFB, 1947.Google Scholar

32 Gesell, Arnold Ilg, Frances, Ames, Louise and Learned, Janet, Infant and Child in the Culture of Today: The Guidance of Development in Home and Nursery School (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1943), 9–10.Google Scholar

33 Ibid., 10.Google Scholar

34 Ibid., 14.Google Scholar

35 Ibid., 10.Google Scholar

36 Ibid., 57.Google Scholar

37 Soundtrack from Why Won't Tommy Eat?, 17 min., 16mm, sound, color film, NFB, 1948.Google Scholar

38 Soundtrack from The Feeling of Hostility, 31min., 16mm, sound, b&w film, NFB, 1948.Google Scholar

39 Soundtrack from He Acts His Age, 14 min., 16mm, sound, color film, NFB, 1949.Google Scholar

40 Soundtrack from Frustrating Fours and Fascinating Fives, 21 min., 16mm, sound, b&w film, NFB, 1953.Google Scholar

41 Ibid.Google Scholar

42 Comacchio, “Nations are Built of Babies,” 211.Google Scholar

43 The “Forest Hill Village Project,” as the study was officially titled, was substantially funded by the RF through the CNCMH. See The Canadian Mental Health Association, Milestones in Mental Health: A Record of Achievements, 1918–1958 (Toronto: National Office of the Canadian Mental Health Association, 1959), 12.Google Scholar

44 Seeley, John R. Alexander Sim, R., and Loosley, Elizabeth W. et al., Crestwood Heights (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1956), 359.Google Scholar

45 Ibid., 387.Google Scholar

46 Ibid., 167.Google Scholar

47 Ibid., 270.Google Scholar

48 Ibid., 207.Google Scholar

49 Ibid., 70.Google Scholar

50 Ibid., 70.Google Scholar

51 Ibid., 219.Google Scholar

52 Ibid., 416.Google Scholar

53 In Crestwood Heights, as in the films of the late-1940s and early-1950s, the term “mental hygiene” is gradually replaced by “mental health.”Google Scholar

54 The industrial implications of the mental hygiene movement are discussed in Peter Miller and Nikolas Rose, “The Tavistock Programme: The Government of Subjectivity and Social Life,” in Sociology, 22, (May 1988): 171–92.Google Scholar

55 Bruch, Hilde Don't Be Afraid of Your Child (New York: Farrar, Straus and Young, 1952), 54.Google Scholar

56 Ibid., 49.Google Scholar

57 Ibid., 69–70.Google Scholar

58 Ibid., 259.Google Scholar

59 Ibid., 81.Google Scholar

60 Seeley, John R. quoted in Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations (New York: W.W. Norton, 1978), 167–8.Google Scholar

61 Bruch, Don't Be Afraid of Your Child, 255.Google Scholar

62 Ibid.Google Scholar

63 Soundtrack from Being Different, 10 min., 16mm, sound, b&w film, NFB, 1957. The threat of being labeled “a girl” in this context is analogous to being accused of having homosexual tendencies and, as Mary Louise Adams observes in her The Trouble with Normal: Postwar Youth and the Making of Heterosexuality (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997) was a powerful and ubiquitous means for shaping sexual roles in the 1950s.Google Scholar

64 Soundtrack from Who is Sylvia?, 29 min., 16mm, sound, b&w film, NFB, 1957.Google Scholar

65 Soundtrack from Shyness, 22 min., 16mm, sound, b&w film, NFB, 1953.Google Scholar

66 Ibid.Google Scholar

67 Cohen, Sol “The Mental Hygiene Movement and the Development of Personality: Changing Conceptions of the American College and University, 1920–1940,“ in History of Higher Education Annual, 2 (1982): 65.Google Scholar

68 Cohen, Sol “The School and Personality Development,“ in Historical Inquiry in Education: A Research Agenda, John H. Best, ed. (Washington: American Educational Research Association, 1983), 120.Google Scholar

69 Cohen, “The Mental Hygiene Movement, The Development of Personality and the School“: 132.Google Scholar

70 Soundtrack from Child Guidance Clinic, 28 min., 16mm, sound, b&w film, NFB, 1955.Google Scholar

71 Ibid.Google Scholar

72 Griffin, J.D. and Seeley, J.R. “Education for Mental Health: An Experiment,“ in Canadian Education VII (June 1952): 21.Google Scholar

73 Of all that failed to come to pass, perhaps the most damning is the statistical rise in the number of children with mental health problems. The ratio of children with problems in the general population cited in Child Guidance Clinic is 1:10; a 1995 CBC Television public service advertisement placed the ratio at 1:5.Google Scholar

74 Soundtrack from The Teacher—Authority or Automaton, 28 min., 16mm, sound, b&w film, NFB, 1962; soundtrack from Child of the Future: How He Might Learn, 58 min., 16mm, sound, b&w film, NFB, 1964.Google Scholar

75 Soundtrack from The Test, 29 min., 16mm, sound, color film, NFB, 1961; soundtrack from Child of the Future: How He Might Learn. Google Scholar

76 Cohen, “The Mental Hygiene Movement, The Development of Personality and the School“: 142. Cohen offers a comprehensive summary of his 1980s research on the mental hygiene movement in his Challenging Orthodoxies: Toward a New Cultural History of Education (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 1999).Google Scholar

77 Cohen, “The Mental Hygiene Movement, The Development of Personality and the School“: 149.Google Scholar

78 Robert, S. Morison quoted in Theresa Richardson, R. The Century of the Child: The Mental Hygiene Movement and Social Policy in the United States and Canada (New York: State University of New York Press, 1989), 161.Google Scholar

79 Cohen, Sol “The Mental Hygiene Movement, the Commonwealth Fund and Public Education, 1921–1933,“ in Private Philanthropy: Proceedings of the Rockefeller Archive Center Conference, Gerald Benjamin, ed. (New York: Rockefeller Archive Publication, 1980), 44. No matter that the hygienists’ knowledge was “flimsy;” this epistemological oversight was more than compensated for by the extraordinary popular support that the mental hygiene project garnered among the American public in the 1950s. In the post-war period, Cohen reports, the mental health point of view penetrated deeply into the zeitgeist of the United States as evidenced by Life Magazine's 1950 survey of public attitudes toward education, in which 87 percent of those polled upheld personality development as a proper object of the schools’ concern. However, by 1959 nearly 60 percent of adults reported to Canadian Gallup pollsters that “discipline in our schools is…not severe enough.” Canadian Institute of Public Opinion, June 20, 1959.Google Scholar

80 Soundtrack from Making a Decision in the Family, 8 min., 16mm, sound, b&w film, NFB, 1957.Google Scholar

81 Another symbol of this fait accompli is the opening credits of The New Baby. In past films of this genre, the source of the child-rearing information contained within the film was attributed to the Mental Health Division of National Health and Welfare. This reference is now dropped, and the origin of the advice is attributed to a more generic Child and Maternal Health Division of National Health and Welfare.Google Scholar

82 Soundtrack from The World of Three, 28 min., 16mm, sound, b&w film, NFB, 1966.Google Scholar

83 Soundtrack from Phoebe, 28 min., 16mm, sound, b&w film, NFB, 1964.Google Scholar

84 Soundtrack from No Reason to Stay, 28 min., 16mm, sound, b&w film, NFB, 1964.Google Scholar

85 Soundtrack from Flowers on a One-way Street, 57 min., 16mm, sound, b&w film, NFB, 1967. Somewhat ironic are the lyrics of a popular song that summer: “All the children are insane; all the children are insane, waiting for the summer rain, yeah.” (The Doors, “The End” in The Doors ASCAP 1967.)Google Scholar

86 Seeley, Crestwood Heights, p. 219; Bruch, Don't Be Afraid of Your Child, p. 255.Google Scholar

87 Owram, Born at the Right Time, x–xi. To Owram's list of historical forces at work in the post-war period we might add others. In The Big Generation (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1980), John Kettle lists affluence, technology, family size, cities, and medicine—as well as the parenting advice of Dr. Spock—among the forces that shaped the post-war generation. In Henry A. Giroux and Roger I. Simon's Popular Culture, Schooling, and Everyday Life (New York: Bergin and Garvey, 1989), the authors argue that the whole body of popular culture of a period is a significant, though informal, shaping force for a generation.Google Scholar

88 Soundtrack from Flowers on a One-way Street. Google Scholar

89 Seeley, Crestwood Heights, 416.Google Scholar