Since the 1940's, classroom films have aimed at tutoring young adolescents on subjects such as sexual development, the importance of fitting in, and juvenile delinquency, all in tidy, ten-minute sermons disguised as dramas. This collection illustrates social norms from post-WWII America.

Billions of American tax dollars go into a vast array of programs targeting various social issues: the opioid epidemic, criminal violence, chronic unemployment, and so on. Yet the problems persist and even grow. Howard Husock argues that we have lost sight of a more powerful strategy-a preventive strategy, based on positive social norms. In the past, individuals and institutions of civil society actively promoted what may be called "bourgeois norms,"...