In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Rocking the Schoolhouse: Re-reading “Schoolhouse Rock!” in the College Classroom
  • Robert Ovetz (bio)

“Schoolhouse Rock!” was a widely-viewed, long-running television series of educational animations for children. A number of the episodes (readily available on video and on line) are valuable resources for modeling analytical thinking skills to help students learn to deconstruct the founding myths of American history and our political system that are deeply embedded in the media and in textbooks. The animations are extremely short, colorful, fast moving, and musical, and they appear to have maintained a reputation for being “cool,” making them fun to watch and an appealing means to engage and keep the attention of students.

I use episodes of “Schoolhouse Rock!” in my community college U.S. history courses to complement Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States and in my political science courses to complement either Michael Parenti’s Democracy for the Few or William Grover and Joseph Peschek’s Voices of Dissent.

Typically, I will introduce a new topic and then ask my students to look out for certain themes in both the lyrics (I hand out printed lyrics) and images of the relevant “Schoolhouse Rock!” animation. “The Shot Heard ‘Round the World’,” for example, is ideal for talking about the “two American Revolutions,” from above and from below. When I ask my students how the Revolution is portrayed in the animation, they immediately observe that it is like a game of tag, not bloody, deadly, and destructive. We discuss whether the Revolution was merely a series of battles or an ongoing cross-class social movement populated by what Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker (in The Many-Headed Hydra) call the “motley crew” that sparked the Revolution.

We discuss not only whether the Revolution was just about fighting but also who did the fighting and what they were fighting for. Students often notice that the only role that women are shown [End Page 73] playing is arming men and young children (as child soldiers) and shoving them off to war. This opens the way for us to discuss how the army was formed out of the local democratic militias composed of slaves, indentured workers, mechanics, and sailors who began the Revolution in the streets years earlier in a revolt against privilege and despotism rather than merely the distant king.

This is used as a jumping off point to model James Loewen’s critique (in Lies My Teacher Told Me) of the portrayal of history as the inevitable product of “great men.” Once the students have deconstructed the visual and musical framing of the Revolution in the animation, we are able to discuss how class, gender, and race are whitewashed out of the entire Revolution.

Students are often excited to watch this and other “Schoolhouse Rock!” animations in my classes; they are a sure-fire way to stimulate exciting and high level critical discussion of America’s founding myths.

Call for Teaching Notes for Radical Teacher

Is there a book, film, essay, poem, or story that you’ve found particularly useful in the classroom and want to share with other Radical Teacher readers? We are especially interested in Teaching Notes on new materials not widely known, but we would also like to hear about newly rediscovered older works, as well as new ways of teaching familiar ones.

Or has something challenging, encouraging, or frustrating happened in class? If you think our readers can learn from your experience—whether you handled things well, handled them badly, or are still trying to decide—we’d like to hear about it.

Contributions should run about 500 words. If you’d like to see some sample Teaching Notes, check out “Recent Issues” on our web site.

Please send a hard copy of your Note to Bob Rosen, Department of English, William Paterson University, 300 Pompton Road, Wayne, New Jersey 07470—and also an e-mail, with the header “Teaching Note,” to: bobrosen@radicalteacher.org.

Robert Ovetz

Robert Ovetz, Ph.D, teaches at two San Francisco Bay Area community colleges.

...

pdf

Share