There are some interesting elements in "The Outsider", but as the first in the "Discussion Problems in Group Living" series, it shows evidence that the format is still in need of some work. Even though the film only lasts a bit over 12 minutes, I was pretty tired of Susan Jane's whining by the end. The attempts at comic relief with the character Junior don't work today, but perhaps they did in an age that didn't worry much about childhood obesity. The ending is particularly anticlimactic, as Susan Jane exits the scene and some questions in text form appear on the screen, in silence. (Later films in the series ended with the narrator asking the questions while relevant scenes appeared, followed by the iconic big question mark.) Still, the film was a well-intentioned attempt to raise the issue social exclusion as it really was.
A particularly odd aspect of the film is the matter of quasi-southern accents used by nearly all the characters. Centron films were produced in the Lawrence, Kansas area, mainly making use of local talent. I grew up about 200 miles from Lawrence and don't recall anyone talking as they do here. Could this be a bunch of Kansans directed to speak in their best approximations of a southern accent? This phenomenon was less pronounced in later films in the series, but didn't entirely disappear. E.g., in "What About Juvenile Delinquency?" a boy mentions an upcoming "say-shun" of the city council.