There is a collection of aging movie reels in the Film Department at Founders Memorial Library. It houses Oscar winners, documentaries and everything in between, including educational films that date as far back as 1900. After some scrounging around, I watched some of the best old-timey films that helped to teach those before us.

Frogs are Funny, Frogs are Fat: Adjectives, (1972)

Quite possibly the best adjective teaching film that has a frog theme. As frogs are shown being froggy (hey, an adjective), the narrator uses simple sentences to show how adjective-inclined frogs are as a species.

Through the film, I learned that frogs are fat, funny, lean, green, wet, old, croaky and bulgy. “The Adjective Song” at the end really drives the point home that no other amphibian is better at teaching rudimentary English. “Frogs are funny, frogs are fat. Words like these are called adjectives. How about that!”

Welcome to the Third Grade, (1970)

This story tells the tale of Jerry Allen, a third-grader who, because he has trouble reading, may not pass to the fourth grade. This story would work better as a Lifetime Movie of the Week starring Valerie Bertinelli as Jerry’s mom and the old Haley Joel Osment as Jerry. The title would be “Conjugating the Verb: Big City Reading is Hard: the Jerry Allen Story.”

This film also has the blueprint for half of all the pornos that take place in schools: A male student struggles in class and the older female teacher offers to tutor him, and his mother pleads with the male principal to help her son pass. The only difference is that this film didn’t have a happy ending. Jerry has to repeat the third grade.

Less Far Than the Arrow, (1968)

I only took one thing from this film about high school nogoodniks who don’t appreciate poetry: “There is more to being True than going steady.”

Wattsie, (1961)

Flaunting authority has never been so mundane. High school principal Ed Watts likes to run a loose ship. So loose, in fact, that his custodians steal milk from the cafeteria, and the teachers routinely leave during the middle of class to have “coffee parties.” They do put students in charge, but they can’t stop the general shenaniganary that erupts.

Some of the more straight-laced inhabitants, including the vice principal and his teacher wife, want to find a way to tell Watts, or Wattsie as they call him, that he needs to grow a pair and reign in the slackers.

There is no resolution at the end of the film because it’s intentionally left open-ended, so the viewer can discuss the scenario. If it did continue, however, the vice principal would probably say Watts was a swell a guy, but then paint him as a Communist. He would then lose his job and have to go back to organizing sock hops at the local malt shop.