Originally Aired: November 1st, 1975
Written by: Lynn Ahrens
Performed by: Lynn Ahrens
Shel's Review
Music: 🎵🎵🎵🎵
Animation: 📺📺📺
Pedagogy: 🎓🎓🎓🎓🎓
Accuracy: 🎯🎯🎯
Yikes Factor: 😬😬😬
This song probably has the most lasting legacy of any Schoolhouse Rock! song because it's commonly recommended to immigrants as a study aid for their citizenship tests, which is always changing but at many points in time has required immigrants to recite the preamble to the constitution from memory. Unfortunately, there's one big problem with that: this is not actually the text of the preamble of the constitution. Well, it nearly is.
This is the preamble to the constitution:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Do you see it? There's four words missing from the lyrics of this song. Maybe that's not enough to make you fail your citizenship test but like, the Department of Homeland Security is always trying to find excuses to deport people so I would want to make sure anyone I recommend this song to as a study aid be made very aware of those four missing words.
Moving aside from that, I think this is a very catchy song that is pleasant to listen to. The animation is good. It's nothing spectacular but it's good. The pedagogy, missing words aside, is very good. You absolutely will remember the preamble from this song and I think to many Americans this song is basically the way that we remember the preamble in the same way one uses the Alphabet Song to remember alphabetical order. Not that, as adults, you typically need to recite the preamble from memory, if you're already a citizen.
My main gripe with this song is the way it frames the constitution. A constitution is a set of legal principles not a set of moral principles. In order words, it is a description of a structure not a description of values. In America, we have this mythical religious devotion to the constitution, as if it is a religious text. It's a major part of the American Civic Religion. While the preamble does have some descriptions of values, the bulk of the constitution is stuff like this:
Neither House, during the Session of Congress, shall, without the Consent of the other, adjourn for more than three days, nor to any other Place than that in which the two Houses shall be sitting.
It's procedural rules for governance. It's by-laws. It's boring. Also, there's this stuff about how the constitution is meant to "keep us free" and "ensure a land of liberty" but you have to remember that this country was built on slavery. Who was being given any sort of freedom by the constitution? It certainly wasn't enslaved Africans. Remember, only 6% of the population was allowed to vote under the original constitution. In 1787, it was only 6% of the population being given any sorts of rights or freedoms.
Besides the religious mythologizing of a legal text, it's also just a creepy little cinematic. There's jaunty fun imagery of marching soldiers as a core principle of the country. There's long lines of white people—and only white peoples—voting. There's people of color in this song, they just don't get to vote. The creepiest moment though is absolutely the final scene where an entire beautiful forest is completely deforested in an instant and replaced by an endless sea of identical suburban houses. Absolutely terrifying.
June's Review
Music 🎵🎵🎵
Animation 📺📺📺📺
Pedagogy 🎓🎓🎓🎓🎓
Accuracy 🎯🎯
Yikes 😬😬😬😬😬
Musically, I like this one. It's a nice little folk song for a quick topic, and it's got a good tune. That would be enough for me to give it even 4 points but I have to dock it for feeling so strangely disjointed? The intro at the beginning is so out of place from the rest of the song it makes me wonder if it was meant to be an intro to every America Rock song that got scrapped for some reason. And then the song repeats itself halfway through, which is great for teaching but a bit weird musically. It's not bad, just a bit strange.
Animation wise. it's even better. It's so much fun! There's so many great transitions between scenes, and the whole thing of replaying all the scenes from the first part but this time with modern characters is really fun. The designs are heavily characterized without leaning into gross out territory, and it's just fun to watch. And then there's what it conveys...
Yes, this song teaches you the preamble to the constitution (plus or minus 4 words). However I'd say this song is even more effective at teaching a completely different lesson: the idea that America is a single, continuous march of progress that can be easily traced through history. This song doesn't just want you to learn the constitution; it wants you to see the constitution as a line that connects you directly to the founding fathers. It connects ideas in the words to things that a viewer would relate to; i.e. "Establish Justice" becomes a courtroom, "secure the blessings of liberty" becomes voting. Then, it shows those things with characters from the 1700s and also characters from the current era to say "see, we're still following the rules, we're still doing it exactly the same, and we're still doing great"
So many things in the cartoon are based on this. The original capital building becomes the new capital building. The military of the revolutionary war is the same as the military of the Vietnam war. And this is... horrifying! The supreme court is CURRENTLY striking down every freedom they can think of by randomly calling it "unconstitutional", and this specific viewpoint, that America today is running on the exact same principles it was 250 years ago, is their excuse. Voting has changed a fucking lot since 1776, hell the very next SONG is about this topic!
If anything, I find this song more horrifying then some of the really pro-america propaganda songs because it's propaganda is so quiet, and so conservative. It's embedded not in the lyrics, but rather in the animation, in the little details around everything.
And yeah, that ending is horrifying. Please no suburbs. 5/5 yikes. Eugh.
Up Next: White Feminism Rock!
Publishing Note: Shel goes under the knife on Thursday and will be in the hospital for a week. A new post may or may not go up next Monday.
