PropagandaRock

A Schoolhouse Rock! Retrospective

Join @shel and @junipertheory as we rewatch and review all 64 Schoolhouse Rock! songs in chronological order.


Shel might finish it here
shelraphen.com/

Originally Aired: March 31st, 1973
Written by: Bob Dorough
Performed by: Bob Dorough

Shel's Review

Music: 🎡🎡🎡
Animation: πŸ“Ί πŸ“Ί πŸ“Ί πŸ“Ί πŸ“Ί
Pedagogy: πŸŽ“
Accuracy: 🎯🎯🎯🎯🎯
Yikes Factor: 😬

Bob brings us an incredibly high concept season finale here with our twelve times tables. Boy is it spiky. I think the song is fun but could've been better. I really like the music when he's actually multiplying by twelves but it feels like a completely separate song from the rest of it like he just takes a break to sing a completely different song with no good bridge or segue. The animation is really fun. I love the character design and the pinball table and all the fun visual effects and the weird stylized square footprints. I love how the stripes on the alien are actually just transparency to the starry style behind them. Pedagogically this is possibly the worst one. In attempting to kind-of explain the concept of base-12 to us (in second grade??? really??? is this what y'all were learning in school at the same time as multiplying by three?) he really confuses and loses track of the point of the song being to learn how to multiply by twelve. As a kid this song left me feeling like multiplying by twelve must be really complicated and hard. He spends so much time singing about how much easier life would be for hypothetical aliens and not on anything useful like strategies for multiplying by 12. As far as I can tell, the math checks out here, just not the pedagogy.

June's Review

Music 🎡🎡🎡🎡🎡

This song is the sequel to figure 8. The song is just whatever, mostly, but that intro riff? That fucking intro riff? My fucking god. It is genuinely one of my favorite riffs ever. And if you don't believe me, why not ask MOTHER. FUCKING. MF. DOOM This riff is fucking AWESOME, it is the best sample in schoolhouse rock and maybe my favorite little musical bit. This on it's own elevates it to 5/5, even though the rest of the song is... pretty good i guess.

Animation πŸ“Ί πŸ“Ί πŸ“Ί πŸ“Ί πŸ“Ί

I really love the animation here? The way the funky little guy is portrayed, the way he like. Manifests Piano, the pinball machine? It's all just super fun to watch. I don't really have anything bad to say!

Pedagogy πŸŽ“πŸŽ“πŸŽ“πŸŽ“

So uh, yes, I was the person who was really excited to ponder the idea of counting in different bases in the second grade... I found the idea in here awesome. Also like, it does teach twelve times tables pretty well! but mostly yeah I'm that fucker who was like OOO YEAH THAT'S INTERESTING" fdhjksdfkdf. Can't be that mad about it.

Accuracy and Yikes 🎯🎯🎯🎯🎯/😬

Why are you combining accuracy and yikes, June? Well you see, I don't think anything in this song aged so badly that it's wrong, but instead it aged in a way that going "It's TWELVETOES" means I have to glare at our audience.

Up Next: A Special Multiplication Round-Up Math Special! And then!! Grammar Rock!!


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in reply to @PropagandaRock's post:

Also joining in with June on getting fascinated with other bases than 10! Granted, I think my main drive for going into computer software was mostly Logo with the Turtle and knowing my dad was a Computer Engineer (i.e. more hardware-focused).

However, later I discovered how base 16 was relatively core (or at least easier) for some things in computing (particularly defining RGBA colors) and available on even some scientific calculators with alphanumeric displays, this song certainly had to have had an influence on my interests. πŸ˜…

The teaching other bases thing was kind of a bit of a hangover of "New Math" which I actually wish had worked, because I'm also a different base sicko.

For whatever reason, this and the Good Eleven were not on the VHS tape rerelease that I continually devoured as a kid in the mid 80s despite showing up in the promotional material and the back of the cover iirc.

I felt so mystified by these missing songs, and I didn't get a chance to hear this one until college when I got the fantastic Schoolhouse Rock Rocks album.

That's weirding me out a bit to hear, because I would watch and rewatch the series on VHS as a kid myself, and I very clearly remember this song being on the tape. There must have been some later re-release in the 90's that included the missing segments. EDIT: Quick check on Wikipedia, and while it doesn't give specifics, there was another VHS release in '95 across four tapes, which tracks with my memory of things, so what I had was probably that.

I absolutely had such mixed feelings about this one as a kid. I love the chorus and the riff is KILLER (holy shit that MF DOOM track!!), and as an adult I think it's cool to introduce the concept of base-12 to kids who could potentially grok it-- but also, I was the child who Did Not understand the concept and was just confused trying to figure out what it had to do with multiplying 12. and then the actual bit where they go through the 12x tables is just boring repetition, and does absolutely nothing to help you memorize them or denote a pattern.

I eventually had to teach myself how to multiply 12s with the 10x+2x method, and even today I only reliably have up to 12x6 memorized and still have to fall back on the mental arithmetic. thank god they taught us some of those 2-digit tricks in other songs, I guess?

when I was a kid I was so bad at my times tables the teacher let me take the VHS of Multiplication rock home to help me practice. And Little Twelve Toes completely terrified me. I was afraid I was going to catch him looking in a window at night which, I'm suprised to now learn is not remotely a thing that he does in the video given how strongly the image implanted in my mind. it was a whole thing, we had to stop the tape before that song, my Mom had to sit down my younger brother and be like "yeah I dunno but it really bothers your brother so just don't talk about Little Twelve Toes" in the end I'm still pretty bad at multiplication but I did really internalize the lesson about alternate number bases.

That opening riff got me excited for something interesting, which faded rapidly as the spoken bit went on, and then never came back. I like the chorus too since it reminds me of a certain style, but the rest is just kinda. There.