‘Schoolhouse Rock’ Moves On to College

The Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons has used it to teach first-year medical students about the nervous system. Government and lobbyist groups have used it to train staffers about the legislative process. Aspiring citizens have studied it to learn the Constitution.

It is “Schoolhouse Rock”--and it’s not just for kids anymore.

It’s also not just a cartoon anymore. The four-time Emmy-winning series of three-minute animated lessons in history, science, math and other subjects also is now the subject of a book, a series of videos, a musical revue and, starting today at Cal State Fullerton, an art exhibition titled “Everybody’s Rockin’ . . . It’s Schoolhouse Rock.”

“It’s really amazing,” said Tom Yohe, a New York advertising executive and one of the creators of the series that originally aired Saturday mornings on ABC-TV from 1973-85. “We had no idea it would have that kind of impact on a generation.”

He’s not kidding. When curator Anna Sanchez called him to get animation cels, storyboards and sketches for her Cal State Fullerton exhibition, Yohe wasn’t sure he could round up enough art.

“Unfortunately, most of the art was thrown out in the ‘70s and ‘80s,” he said. The reason: Yohe only considered the finished films to be important; he kept just a few art pieces for sentimental reasons. Animators Bill Peckmann and Phil Kimmelman saved the bulk of what will be shown. “They have squirrel instincts I don’t have,” he said.

It was the many squirrel-cheeked characters on “Schoolhouse Rock” who explained multiplication, grammar, American history and science to Generation X-ers when they were kids. Now the show has become a nostalgic focal point for them, their parents and older siblings who watched with them.

Hence last year’s release by Rhino Records of a four-CD boxed set of all 50 original “Schoolhouse Rock” songs, a new book, “Schoolhouse Rock--The Official Guide” by Yohe and co-creator George Newall published last April, the series of videos and four CD-ROMs based on the show.

There’s also a tribute album, “Schoolhouse Rock! Rocks” featuring alternative-rock bands playing amped-up versions of their favorite songs from the show. Blind Melon sings “Three Is a Magic Number,” Better Than Ezra does “Conjunction Junction” and the Lemonheads do “My Hero, Zero.”

There’s even a musical revue: “Schoolhouse Rock Live!” was first staged in Chicago in 1994 by Theater Bam and then went off-Broadway in New York. It has been licensed to more than 100 theater companies across the nation and currently is playing again in Chicago.

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Audiences periodically pack the Troubadour in West Hollywood to hear tunes from “Schoolhouse Rock” performed by jazz pianist Bob Dorough, who wrote and performed many of the songs and became the show’s musical director, and jazz trumpeter and singer Jack Sheldon, who sang many of them, including “I’m Just a Bill” and “Conjunction Junction.” (Their next show is scheduled for April 12.)

The series’ popularity stems as much from its educational value as from its nostalgic hold on post-baby boomers, who recite lyrics to the catchy tunes like a password to a secret society.

“Take anyone college age and say ‘Conjunction Junction’ and they’ll automatically say ‘What’s your function?’ ” said Sanchez, 28. “It’s an icon to Generation X, just like Howdy Doody was to the baby boom era.”

“We get calls all the time from parents and consumers who are very pleased with the subject content of these shows,” said Paul Richard, vice president and director of education at the National Institute for Financial Education in San Diego, a nonprofit agency that currently advises “Schoolhouse Rock” on its “Money Rock” series.

Sanchez, a graduate student in exhibition design, got the idea to use “Schoolhouse Rock” as the subject for her first exhibition while leafing through Yohe and Newall’s guide last summer at a Costa Mesa clothing store.

“This was something very important to me when I was a kid,” she said, “and when I talk to kids in my neighborhood, they know the stories too because they’re now watching them on ABC. We sing them together. There’s a timeless quality to them.”

To Yohe, the stories and most other aspects of the animated shorts are timeless too. “Except the bell-bottoms” some of the characters wore, he said, laughing.

ABC restored the show to its Saturday-morning lineup in 1992, commissioning the original participants and musician-songwriter Dave Frishberg and others to come up with new installments exploring money with such songs as “Tax Man Max” and “Tyrannosaurus Debt.”

“Schoolhouse Rock” may have an even higher profile now than it did originally.

References are everywhere, from baseball caps to magazines, TV and the movies. There are “What’s Your Function?” T-shirts and baseball caps. The phrase “I’m Just a Bill[ionaire]” appears next to a photo of Microsoft’s Bill Gates in the February issue of John F. Kennedy Jr.’s George magazine. “The Simpsons” did a parody of “I’m Just a Bill” retooling it as “I’m Just an Amendment” jabbing special interest groups in government. And Winona Ryder’s character in “Reality Bites” sang both “Conjunction Junction” and “I’m Just a Bill.”

Even though Yohe said ABC isn’t ordering any more segments beyond the 10 produced since 1992, he hopes its second life will be extended now that Walt Disney Co. has merged with Capital Cities/ABC, putting Walt Disney Co. Chairman Michael Eisner back in the picture.

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It was a young Eisner, as a vice president of children’s programming at ABC in the early ‘70s, who bought “Schoolhouse Rock” for the network after Yohe and Newall, also an advertising executive, had pitched it.

Yohe said he has collected a folder full of examples showing how “Schoolhouse Rock” has worked itself into the vernacular. “I want to tell [Eisner] that it would be awful to let [the show] languish.”

Yohe’s attachment to the show reflects how for him, like its other creators, “Schoolhouse Rock” was transformed from a job into a family affair.

All six of Yohe’s children participated in the series. Yohe’s daughter Lauren, then 6, can be heard as the voice of the little girl at the end of “Interjections!” who says “Darn! That’s the end.” Tom Yohe Jr., now also an advertising executive, designed “The Tale of Mr. Morton,” a 1993 segment on how to build sentences.

Jack Sheldon’s son John is the voice of the little boy in “I’m Just a Bill.” Dorough’s daughter and her friend sang on “Four-Legged Zoo” after giving him the idea for the song.

The children weren’t the only ones to find their way into the cartoons: Look closely and you can spot Camp Newall and Yohe T-shirts in “Ready or Not, Here I Come.”

“That’s one of the great things about it,” Sanchez said, “there’s all these great in-jokes.”

Sanchez’s favorite was “Multiplication Rock” segment “Figure Eight,” which showed a girl in class daydreaming of skating figure 8s. It concludes with the numeral falling on its side to become the symbol for infinity.

“I remember I wanted to be just like the figure-eight girl,” she said. “I had to have a little pink ice-skating outfit just like hers.”

But she learned more than a desire for a pink skating outfit.

“I knew my math tables by 8,” she said, “And it was the first time that anyone ever introduced the concept of infinity to me.”

* “Everybody’s Rockin’ . . . It’s Schoolhouse Rock” opens today in the East Gallery at the Visual Arts Complex, Cal State Fullerton, 800 N. State College Blvd. Gallery hours for opening day: noon to 4 p.m. Free. Through Feb. 23. (714) 773-3262.