School House Rock

During the summers, I try to continue the kids with some educational material. It was something I was forced to do as a kid. As a result, they go back to school in the fall and have little ramp-up time before they’re in the swing of things. I can actually see the benefits of this practice in their confidence levels and expectations of themselves.

However, my six-year-old son Alex is headed into first grade and I’m struggling with teaching him reading. Oh… don’t get me wrong. He’s doing just fine for a six-year-old. The problem is me.

I don’t know if any of you have actually tried to teach reading to anyone, but IT’S FREAKING HARD! The English language doesn’t seem to obey any rules, which now that the fact has been brought to my attention adds a whole new level of frustration. It really messes with the spreadsheets! Alex finally mastered the “ooooh” sound made by “oo”. Only now he has trouble with the word “door”. Aaaigh!

Alex’s motivations are good. He really wants to start reading comics by himself. But he’s got some factors working against him. Video games, toys, and siblings are constant distractions. When Ashton was Alex’s age he took to reading by himself off on a corner alone on the playground. His motivation was an old child-library copy of Frankenstein he found in my Halloween boxes. If Alex finds something like that, he has the option of bringing it to Ashton and Katie and asking them to read it to him. The dynamics are different. Not insurmountable, just different.

ANYWAY… I was driving home the other day beating myself up for my complete lack of patience and training in early childhood education. I’ve got the workbooks and the schedule worked out. I just don’t have any tricks or tips on how to teach a language that seems to PRIMARILY RELY ON MEMORIZATION. Stupid English.

Then, as often happens, my thoughts drifted back to the seventies.

What did we do? How did we learn these things as we grew up?

“Conjunction Junction, what’s your function?”

Saturday morning cartoons didn’t start in the seventies, but they were full swing tradition by the time the seventies rolled around. In an era where you couldn’t control what was on your television set and when, the major broadcasting companies decided the way to Saturday morning ratings Heaven was through the kids. And all three networks filled Saturday mornings from the crack of dawn until the noon-time hour with glorious, glorious, glorious cartoons.

One of the more annoying things to happen during this block, starting in 1973, was the ABC network's School House Rock. They were short, three minute music video cartoons that would teach us captive kids about history, math, grammar, science, or civics. It was a great idea, apparently inspired by some advertising agency exec noticing his son couldn’t remember his times tables, but could remember all the lyrics to popular rock songs. If you care to, you can read more about it here.






The thing about School House Rock is that it’s one of the things I consider a ‘false memory’. Mention it to someone who lived through it and you’ll get a smile and some warm nostalgic feelings. BUT… sitting there in front of the TV in 1974, I did NOT WANT School House Rock. No one did. Get it out of the way and bring on the Super Friends or Scooby Doo. None of our remotes had the little button that zips through commercials like we have today. OH WAIT… none of us even had remotes.



Fondly remembered memory today, hated annoyance back in the day.



And what do kids have today?

We were captives at the time. We wanted our pajamas and our sugared cereal and our Saturday morning cartoons. We wanted them so bad we would sit through commercials and educational jewels like School House Rock. If today's networks wanted to try to sneak in educational stuff so they could score a mark with parents, what would they do? They would have to build a hugely successful video game with a sub-element of accidental learning. And even then, the kid can still choose to play the latest “first person shooter” instead.

Like it or not, I was helped through school by School House Rock. I still remember my times tables for fives by singing the hillbilly twangy “Ready or Not, Here I Come” song that taught five tables. And just ask my friend Bill how he remembers the legislative process. (He looks down at the shirt he received as a gift that reads “I’m just a Bill”.)



In today’s world, there is no direct equivalent learning tool. The last of the Saturday morning cartoon blocks died a few years ago and the educational block efforts died awhile back. But in the 1970's, we were a captive audience being force-fed the ideas like “Conjunction Junction, what’s your function? Hooking up phrases and words and clauses.”

As you may have noticed, I often make these observations and offer no answers or solutions. That’s because I don’t believe any one person has answers to these questions, or answers that will work for everyone. But I do believe asking the questions or pointing out the differences is important. Its strong fact that one generation is extremely different from the next and so on. In my opinion, It’s important to recognize why the differences are there, then you can confront the problem from an educated standpoint. It's also my opinion that these differences make parental influence in today's society more important than ever.

All that being said, care to know how I handled the issue with Alex?



I’ve set up an environment and tradition in my house around some of these cartoons from my childhood. I use the technology of today to serve up the entertainment of yesterday in a way that has never been possible before. So when Alex begs me for just one cartoon before bed, and I give-in and tell him we can snuggle on the couch and use the Apple TV to watch Super Friends... Well, we make just one stop first...

Well every person you can know,
And every place that you can go,
And anything that you can show,
You know they're nouns.

A noun's a special kind of word,
It's any name you ever heard,
I find it quite interesting,
A noun's a person, place, or thing.



Thanks,
DCD