My daughter is taking a government class, and she asked for my help…she has to memorize the preamble to the Constitution and write it for a quiz next week.
So, I had her log onto YouTube and search for Schoolhouse Rock Preamble and watch this several times.
Took her about 20 minutes. The Schoolhouse Rock version isn’t quite right…it’s “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union,” not “We the people, in order to form a more perfect union,” but minor quibble.
She also watched “I’m Just a Bill” and “Conjunction Junction.”
Saturday morning cartoons weren’t all dreck…they managed to sneak in education too, the dirty bastards.
We’ve been watching SHR a lot here, too. The sprog learned just enough about electricity to completely get it all wrong. So I found “Electricity,” which led to pretty much every other song. He enjoys them and if he learns from them, even better.
My youngest two kids love Schoolhouse Rock. I bought the DVD’s about a year ago. I love that it has a random feature, and will play them however. Even if they aren’t paying attention to the TV, later on they’ll be singing about Conjunction Junction.
Nikki’s kg. teacher called me one afternoon, she wasn’t even aware you could get them on DVD.
All hail indeed!
Lynn Ahrens is a Tony-award-winning lyricist who has co-composed such musicals as Lucky Stiff, Ragtime, Seussical, My Favorite Year, and Once On This Island. But to me, she’ll always be the woman who wrote that song about the constitution. All of the composers- Ahrens, Bob Dorough, Dave Frishberg- they’re geniuses. They were all ad people. I guess that’s why they were so good at getting a simple message across in a catchy song.
Warning - Warning - There are a couple words of the Preamble that are not in the song. I can not recall what they are, but I ran into this when I did that exact same thing with my daughter a couple years ago. Just check it out & make sure she understands that.
My problem was always that my teacher would always say “Does anyone know what a conjunction is?” and I’d think “Conjunction Junction, what’s your function…blah blah blah blah” I’d forget the important part!! And then, about five hours later, in the middle of doing something else, I’d remember the line.
imagine the surprise a law school teacher got when he asked his usual question: “does any one know the preamble to the constitution?” a few people in the class started singing and he was stunned. he got used to it for quite a few years, until he hit a class that watched after shr left the air.
Floundering around for songs to sing, I recently sang the bluesy “Number 9” song to my goddaughters and for some reason they LOVED it. They begged me to sing it again. I wished I knew all the words, but I didn’t so I just had to repeat the first verse and chorus over and over. Bless Schoolhouse Rock.
When I got pregnant, I bought the two-disc DVD of Schoolhouse Rock! and rationalized that it was for my yet-unborn children.
Yeah. Right.
We watch it all the time. Disc one is all of the old-school songs and shorts, and disc two features some modern bands doing their versions of their favorite songs- Electricity and Mr. Morton are great!
