I can't even begin to tell you how excited I was when, wandering through the DVD section of the store, I came across the Schoolhouse Rock!: Special 30th Anniversary Edition,"" and saw the words, ""Includes Every Schoolhouse Rock Song Ever Created."" I was giddy.
According to my half-assed research (i.e. reading the little booklet inside the DVD), 'Schoolhouse Rock!' started because a guy who owned an advertising firm wanted to help his kid learn the multiplication tables, so he commissioned Bob Dorough, a bebop jazz pianist, to put the table to music. Dorough came back to our ad-man with ""Three Is A Magic Number,"" and the ad-man, knowing a good thing when he saw it, took it to ABC, who promptly developed an entire series around the concept.
Now, I have (almost) only good things to say about 'Schoolhouse Rock!' I can't recite the Preamble to the Constitution without singing 'The Preamble.'A_ Not to mention, I learned all the planets from Interplanet Janet (heck, I kind of had a crush on her, too, how can you resist a girl whose lower body is a combustible engine?).
However, upon watching the segment of the DVD titled ""America Rock,"" I began to have some doubts about the value of the songs for kids. Looking back, it seems very appropriate that 'Schoolhouse Rock!'A_ was started by someone in advertising, because that's mostly what America Rock is: A big commercial for America being sold to children. I don't mean to be a killjoy about this, but, frankly, there's some pretty scary stuff going on in these songs.
Take the song 'Elbow Room,'A_ for instance. The idea behind the song is that immigrants kept coming to the United States and we just couldn't find enough places for them, so we started moving westward, which is visually illustrated by some very happy people doing what can only be described as resembling the dance from the 'I feel like chicken tonight' commercials.
We then are told Jefferson ""buys the Louisiana Territory"" from Napoleon (true) ""without a fuss"" (not true at all""see the Federalist response to the purchase or the dispute it led to with Spain over borders). As we continue moving west in the song, we're told ""There were plenty of fights / To win land rights,"" which is depicted by an arrow knocking the hat off of a man's head, ""but the West was meant to be""it was a manifest destiny!""
Now, please don't misunderstand me: I'm not advocating for a 'Schoolhouse Rock!' song about the Trail of Tears or The Wounded Knee Massacre-these songs would probably make small children cry. But to gloss over the United States' very own original sin, a mass genocide of people, as part of the noble and natural course of a great history strikes me as being kind of...well...scary. Particularly when you think about this kind of mindset in today's geopolitical context: I fear for a day where we see a new 'Schoolhouse Rock!'A_ with a young Muslim girl singing and dancing because she's happy to see a U.S. flag flying over Mecca.
If there were to ever be a 'Schoolhouse Rock!'A_ revival-which I would love-I think they should stick to the Multiplication and Science Rocks, and leave the propaganda to the people who do it best: Fox News.
