Michael Yarbro's post on the number thread got me thinking about this Schoolhouse Rock song. Nobody has yet posted the original cartoon on You Tube yet, but these kids made this homemade video. I'm just posting the link as an excuse to play the song...

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Anybody read the comments section?

"6th grade...1984...Mrs. Johnson asks us to recite the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States of America...and quizzically asks, "Why on earth did you all SING it?""

The songwriter(s) who came up with this ditty earned their keep. NOBODY who ever heard this song forgot the words to the Preamble of the Constitution!

That is exactly how my 7th grade social studies class survived a pop quiz that the mean ol' teacher was sure would sink us all. She was sure we'd cheated somehow. She also, I found out years later, asked one of the other teachers why we were all "looking up and bopping [our] heads" throughout the quiz.

Tom Cruise almighty, but do I love Schoolhouse Rock.

I think it must have been about six years since I had last heard the song, but it is how I passed that test in my senior year of high school.

My Latin teacher used a similar technique to help us remember
how to congugate the verb amare (to love.)

Amo amas amat....amamus amatis amant.

Doesn't sound special? Try singing it to "The Mexican Hat Dance"!

There's a mnemonic like that for sines, cosines, cosecants, cotangents and the like, set to Minuet #4 in G (BWV Anh.II.114) from "Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach" by Christian Petzold (formerly attributed to Johann Sebastian Bach)*. I never learned it, but some of my friends have it down cold.

*The song that Virginia Madsen and the sentient PC "play" together in the movie ELECTRIC DREAMS. I totally had to look at the trivia section at http://www.imdb.com to get the name of the actual piece. I am woefully under-educated in the classical music area, folks.

Same in my 7th grade class. We bought the DVD of the shows for our kids a couple of Christmases back.

Lynn Aherns wrote the song and many of the others you hear on SR. She was a secretary working for the ad agency that created "Schoolhouse Rock." She was hired when she performed a song she wrote called "You're Just A Phase" sung by a woman to her ex-boyfriend, letting him know he's just a phase she was going through...

The Schoolhouse Rock ditties were especially helpful to my kids with learning their multiplication tables.

I wish I could say they helped me remember the tables, but I think I missed the point entirely of those songs! I remember learning the multiplication tables the hard way and years later when I rented the DVD for Schoolhouse Rock, I belately realized the point of the number songs was to help me remember the tables I struggled to memorize!

But I do know the Preamble to the Constitution...

...and hopefully you also know how to use adverbs and conjunctions, as well as how a bill becomes a law.

A few favorites:

I'm Just a Bill
The Shot Heard Round the World
Conjunction Junction

So far, I can't find videos for The Preamble, No More Kings, Elbow Room, Mother Necessity, or The Great American Melting Pot. But they should be there, dammit!

Here's the audio for the Simpsons flag-burning amendment parody - with vocals from the original "Just a Bill" singer Jack Sheldon. Need to find the video though - truly classic.

And yet there's no SCHOOLHOUSE ROCK that tells people how to avoid misusing the word "hopefully" (as Kevin has just done).

I do it just to annoy you.

Hopefully you'll explain the misuse so I can avoid it in the future. (Did I do it wrong too?)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Y37MpPOthU[/youtube]

kid: Hey! Who left all this garbage on the steps of Congress?

rolled up amendment: I'm not garbage.

(singing)
I'm an amendment to be, yes an amendment to be,
and I'm hopin' that they'll ratify me.
There's a lot of flag burners who have got too much freedom.
I wanna make it legal for policemen to beat 'em,
cause there's limits to our liberties.
'Least I hope and pray that there are,
cause those liberal freaks go too far.

kid: Well why can't we just make a law against flag burning?

Amendment: Because that law would be unconstitutional.
But if we changed the Constitution...

kid: Then we could make all sorts of crazy laws!

Amendment: Now you're catching on!

---

Bart: What the hell is this?

Lisa: It's one of those campy 70's throwbacks that appeals to Generation-X'ers.

Bart: We need another Vietnam to thin out their ranks a little.

---

Kid: What if people say you're not good enough to be in the Constitution?

Amendment (singing):
Then I'll crush all opposition to me,
and I'll make Ted Kennedy pay.
If he fights back, I'll say that he's gay.

Congressman: Good news, Amendment! They ratified ya! You're in the U.S. Constitution.

Amendment: Oh yeah! Door's open, boys.

Yes.

Hopefully is an adverb. Its job is to describe or modify verbs (or other modifiers). The vast majority of the English-speaking population has been allowing that single word to substitute for the words "I hope that..." for many, many years, now, and it doesn't work.

"Now everyone understands," Frank said hopefully. <----- [correct usage]

Now Frank..'vast majority' is an example of incorrect English as well. If there's a majority, then describing it as 'vast' is redundant.

"I'm hoping that your explanation sticks with me in the future."

Nope. To have a majority, only 51% is required. "A vast majority" suggests a far higher percentage, which is in fact the case.

Gotta agree with Frank on that one. Hopefully, Simon will have learned his lesson.