Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Of all the great things about television, the greatest is that it’s on every single day. TV history is being made, day in and day out, in ways big and small. In an effort to better appreciate this history, we’re taking a look back, every day, at one particular TV milestone.
IMPORTANT DATE IN TV HISTORY: January 6, 1973
PROGRAM ORIGINALLY AIRED ON THIS DATE: Schoolhouse Rock, “Three Is a Magic Number” (season 1, episode 1). [Stream on Amazon Video.]
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT: “Learning can be fun!” is one of the great lies in American childhood. It’s a deception dreamed up by cynical parents in order to sell things to gullible parents. So many bad TV shows for kids get papered over as being learning experiences. Which is why the rare and remarkable TV shows that actually DO make learning fun (Sesame Street, Blue’s Clues, The Powerpuff Girls) are so special. All those shows owe a debt to Schoolhouse Rock, the 1970s TV series that set a whole bunch of different lessons on everything from arithmetic to American history and government to a series of incredibly catchy songs that helped an entire generation know exactly what a conjunction is and how a bill become a law. The appeal of these shorts were so baked into the fabric of Generation X’s childhood that they got referenced in Reality Bites, only the Ur-text of Gen-X culture and history.
In this first episode, a math lesson gets very specific. Rather than teach kids all the multiplication tables, this episode focuses on the most important ones: the threes. (Actually, the whole first season consisted of episodes dedicated to a different 1-10 number.) The catchy, folky, Bob Dylan-esque “Three Is a Magic Number” will really hammer home what three-times-six equals, how many sides to a triangle, how many angles to a triangle, you name it. All while being pretty clever about how many important things come in threes. It’s like a mnemonic device on steroids, all with fun and expressive animation.
Schoolhouse Rock has endured as a kitschy artifact of the ’70s, back when alternative entertainment could be so unabashedly useful. Does it now come across a bit as the hipster dad who plays ukelele to get his kid to fall asleep? Sure. But it’s also a big piece of ’70s TV history. Also you’re not too good to need a little remedial education. Watch and learn something.
