TUnESDAY: Time to Rock Out

After yesterday's post, I got to thinking about July 4th and the annual gamut of questions that I usually get asked about this time (and at Thanksgiving). I guess those two holidays are especially American, or (at least), Americans celebrate them differently – more American – than anyone else. Anyway, as the sun was shining, my mind was dipping in and out of patriotic tunes and I'd already sent all my ribbing texts to my Welsh friends who have yet to experience what a successful war of independence is like, I had the opportunity to stumble across this little gem from my childhood:

Now, anyone who grew up in the States in the 70s or 80s is probably familiar with Schoolhouse Rock. These were short films, originally aired on ABC on Saturday mornings between 1973 and 1985. Apparently inspired by a dad who noticed that his son was having problems with his times tables, 'Multiplication Rock' kicked everything off with the unforgettable 'Three is the Magic Number' (later famously sampled by De La Soul, of course). Most of us remember the big ones: The Preamble, I'm Just a Bill, Figure Eight, Conjunction Junction, Lolly Lolly Lolly Get your Adverbs Here, Elbow Room, The Great American Melting Pot and of course the psychadelic, strangely sexy disemobdied cyborg head of Interplanet Janet. (Just look at her: pouting mouth, purple fro, retractable arms and shiny tin-plated  boobs! No wonder she's so popular with all the young rocket boys.) I mean, c'mon…these were burned into our brains, week after week, and because of this I know that I'm not the only one who can recite the Preamble to the Constitution by heart (only if I sing it, though) and tell you that when you get an injection in the ass, you use an interjection like 'Hey! That smarts,' or 'Ouch! That hurts!'. Schoolhouse Rock accomplished the seemingly impossible: to teach kids important stuff without them noticing that they've learned it. It's like hiding vegetables in spaghetti sauce – it doesn't matter how the stuff gets in there, as long as it sticks. 

What's most surprising to me – and I bet to most people my age - is that Schoolhouse Rock returned to TV for another six years between 1993 and 1999. What on earth could they possibly talk about? The original run covered all the basics – math, grammar, (American) history, science… surely they could just digitally re-master these classics and our kids would get the jump-start they needed to keep us out of the educational gutter? Well, they could have done that – but they didn't. Instead, they came up with brand-new songs, about more contemporary issues. So, between '93 and '99, you get the unforgettable classics like 'Dollars and Sense' (talking about interest and loans), 'Where the Money Goes' (paying bills), Tax Man Max (paying taxes) and my personal favourite: 'Tyrannosaurus Debt', putting the 'fun' back in 'public funding deficit'. WTF? How is any of that stuff useful? Maybe some would argue that it's more useful than anatomy or parts of speech. Maybe it's just noteworthy that Schoolhouse Rock was absent in the 80s, and the offerings of the 90s were destined to address the backlash from the soul-sucking Me Generation. Maybe ABC just decided that teaching kids how to write a check ('The Check's in the Mail') was more important than teaching them about the importance of innovation (Mother Necessity, 1977) or Women's Right (Suffrin 'til Suffrage, 1976). But it seems to me that SHR, like so many of the kids they are singing too, just grew up too fast. This film terrifies me... but maybe that's the idea...?

Yes, we need to know practical things. We even need to know about current issues, which is why I guess I'm glad that SHR went all Greenpeace on our asses when it came back AGAIN in 2009. But I can hear the development talks as they decided which tact to take this time: "Let's see, we've done grammar, math, science, and history. Then we scared the shit out of them with all our talk about debt, and inflation and paying bills. What can we do now? I know, let's cheer them up with cute little ditties about Global Warming!". To be fair, the latest batch of SHR seems to be back on a positive note. I can imagine watching 'The Trash Can Band' and enjoying teaching my daughter about the importance of recycling, or sitting down together to watch 'Don't be a Carbon Sasquatch' and learning all about carbon footprints. The problem, though, is that I can't. 2009's SHR was a straight-to-DVD job, meaning that the chance of my kid (or anyone else's) ever seeing it are about as probable as me forgetting to Unpack My Adjectives, or ever unlearning the fact that the function of a conjunction is hooking up words and phrases and clauses. Bring back the basics, says I. Cheques (or "checks" back home) are being phased out of the British economy by 2018, but as far as I know we'll still need nouns, verbs and all the numbers (even Naughty Number Nine). Whatever else is happening in the world, prepositions will still be busy, and gravity will still be making victims of us all. How do I know all of this to be true? Because Schoolhouse Rock told me so, 35 years ago.

Next week: Now you're not just bored, you're fat!