Your Junior High Days

Your Junior High Days (1961)

** (out of 4)

This educational short from Herk Harvey (CARNIVAL OF SOULS) was meant for seventh graders who were about to enter the horrors known as Junior High. This short goes over various rules that new students are going to need to learn as well as giving them the basic information that they'll need to try and fit in. If you're familiar with these educational films then you know the best ones, or at least the most entertaining ones, have some campy, over-the-top feel to them. This one here is pretty basic from start to finish without any of that camp feeling so I'm sure a lot of people will find it dry or boring. If you're a fan of these films then it's certainly decently made and is of mild interest considering how the director was.

This short educational movie from Centron is directed by the usually highly competent Herk Harvey. It offers a view of junior high school -- for me those were grades 7 and 8 -- that admits it is daunting, but that it is well within your ability.

But what it if isn't? "Do more than you think you can" the narrator urges his audience. Suppose you think you can do more than you can? Overconfidence is just as common as timidity, and there's even a scientific term for it: the Dunning-Kruger Effect. Suppose, like me, people daunt you? It's not so easy to make that leap of faith, particularly given the fact that most high-school students are far too immature and, according to this, too busy doing more than they think they can, to bother with you.

Librarians, I found, are invariably kind, and a chair with a book in your hand is a fine place to hide.