List of Schoolhouse Rock! episodes
The following is a list of the 64 episodes of the Schoolhouse Rock! series.[1][2]
Series overview
| Season | Theme | Episodes | Originally aired | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| First aired | Last aired | Network | |||||
| 1 | Multiplication Rock | 11 | January 6, 1973 | March 31, 1973 | ABC | ||
| 2 | Grammar Rock | 9 | September 15, 1973 | December 8, 1993 | |||
| 3 | America Rock | 12 | September 20, 1975 | August 27, 2002 | |||
| 4 | Science Rock | 9 | September 16, 1978 | July 14, 1979 | |||
| 5 | Computer Rock | 4 | 1982 | 1984 | |||
| 6 | Money Rock | 8 | May 7, 1994[3] | November 22, 1996 | |||
| 7 | Earth Rock | 11 | March 31, 2009 | Direct-to-video | |||
Episodes
Multiplication Rock, Season 1 (1973)
| No. overall | No. in season | Title | Music by | Lyrics by | Original air date | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | "Three is a Magic Number" | Bob Dorough | Bob Dorough | January 6, 1973 | |
| A magician shows how magic the multiplication of 3 really is, including a family of 3 and a football team whose uniforms are numbered in threes. | ||||||
| 2 | 2 | "My Hero, Zero" | Bob Dorough | Bob Dorough | January 13, 1973 | |
| A young boy portrayed as a superhero (later redesigned as "Schoolhouse Rocky," the franchise mascot), shows his skeptical older sister the importance of the digit 0 as well as multiplication by powers of 10. | ||||||
| 3 | 3 | "Elementary, My Dear" | Bob Dorough | Bob Dorough | January 27, 1973 | |
| The multiplication of 2 is taught in the context of the story of Noah's Ark. | ||||||
| 4 | 4 | "The Four-Legged Zoo" | Bob Dorough w/kids chorus | Bob Dorough | February 10, 1973 | |
| A teacher (Miss Simpson) takes her class to the zoo where they use the animals (Alpacas, Ibexes, Kudus, etc.) to learn the multiplication of 4. | ||||||
| 5 | 5 | "Ready or Not, Here I Come" | Bob Dorough | Bob Dorough | February 17, 1973 | |
| A boy counts by fives during a game of hide and seek with his friends. | ||||||
| 6 | 6 | "I Got Six" | Grady Tate | Bob Dorough | February 24, 1973 | |
| This is the first to feature a black kid as the main character of the series. It teaches about the multiplication of 6 with visits to the neighborhood candy store, a restaurant, and an African prince. It also explores the commutative property in multiplication. | ||||||
| 7 | 7 | "Lucky Seven Sampson" | Bob Dorough | Bob Dorough | February 17, 1973 | |
| Lucky Seven Sampson is a happy-go-lucky but mischievous rabbit with the number 7 stamped on the bottom of his right foot and a black circle around his left eye. He teaches kids from Public School #7 about the multiplication of 7. It also explores the distributive property for multiplying 7 by numbers greater than 10. | ||||||
| 8 | 8 | "Figure Eight" | Blossom Dearie | Bob Dorough | February 24, 1973 | |
| During school on a cold winter's day, a young girl's thoughts about the multiplication of 8 revolve around winter games, particularly ice skating. The video briefly explores the distributive property of multiplication/addition for multiplying 8 by numbers higher than 10. | ||||||
| 9 | 9 | "Naughty Number Nine" | Grady Tate | Bob Dorough | March 17, 1973 | |
|
A Minnesota Fats-like feline pool hustler plays a game of nine-ball, with a mouse as his usual target, in the process showing multiplication by nine. It also looks at the phenomenon that any multiple of nine will have its digits add up to nine (e.g. 3 x 9 = 27, and 2 + 7 = 9). This short came out two years after the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act had prohibited cigarette advertising; it did not, however, prohibit the depiction of smoking in fiction, even in children's programming, so long as it was not a sponsored tie-in. In the short, Number Nine puffs a cigar throughout. ABC Broadcast Standards and Practices, after initially rejecting the short for this reason, relented and allowed the short to air when it accepted that the cat was a villain and would not encourage children to smoke. It remained in rotation through the rest of the series run. | ||||||
| 10 | 10 | "The Good Eleven" | Bob Dorough | Bob Dorough | March 24, 1973 | |
| Winged angels take us through the multiplication of 11 while continuously bumping into the number 10. The distributive property of multiplication and addition, plus the commutative property of multiplication are also briefly explored. | ||||||
| 11 | 11 | "Little Twelvetoes" | Bob Dorough | Bob Dorough | March 31, 1973 | |
| In this space rock piece, a yokel encounters Little Twelvetoes, a peculiar, Mad Hatter-like extraterrestrial lifeform in a flying saucer who has twelve fingers and toes each and counts using base-twelve (which is demonstrated with the Frank Emerson Andrews notation of X and E for the tenth and eleventh digits). Having only ten fingers and toes, the yokel must learn multiplication by twelve "the hard way," and Little Twelvetoes obliges with a game of interplanetary pinball before disappearing into the night. | ||||||
Grammar Rock, Season 2 (1973–74, 1976, 1993)
| No. overall | No. in season | Title | Music by | Lyrics by | Original air date | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12 | 1 | "A Noun is a Person, Place or Thing" | Lynn Ahrens | Lynn Ahrens | September 15, 1973 | |
| A young short-skirted girl (Ahrens in her series debut) sings about the various people, places and things she encounters on her daily adventures, introducing the viewer to the grammatical construct of nouns. | ||||||
| 13 | 2 | "Verb: That's What's Happening" | Zachary Sanders | Bob Dorough | September 22, 1973 | |
| In an homage to blaxploitation films, a young boy learns about verbs from a movie starring his favorite superhero, Verb. | ||||||
| 14 | 3 | "Conjunction Junction" | Jack Sheldon, Terry Morel & Mary Sue Berry | Bob Dorough | November 17, 1973 | |
| In a railyard, a train conductor (Sheldon in his series debut) shows the viewer how conjunctions work by hooking up boxcars representing words, phrases and clauses with one of three conjunction boxcars: AND (a red boxcar), BUT (a yellow tank car), and OR (a green hopper car). This episode served as inspiration for a Norfolk Southern rail television ads that took place in the early to mid 2010s. | ||||||
| 15 | 4 | "Interjections!" | Essra Mohawk | Lynn Ahrens | February 23, 1974 | |
| This song teaches about interjections through three stories: an ill child reacting to a shot of medication, a woman rejecting a suitor's advances, and a group of irate fans shouting non-obscene words in response to an interception at a football game. The song's chorus quotes the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's Messiah. Producer Tom Yohe's daughter Lauren provides the closing line: "Darn! That's the end!" | ||||||
| 16 | 5 | "Unpack Your Adjectives" | Blossom Dearie | George Newall | March 2, 1974 | |
| A young girl and her turtle friend go camping in the forest, using adjectives to describe people, places and things they encounter. This episode is arguably best known for the scene where a tall girl stomps on a small boy as he is laughing at how tall she is growing, not realizing that he is shrinking. | ||||||
| 17 | 6 | "Lolly, Lolly, Lolly Get Your Adverbs Here" | Bob Dorough | Bob Dorough | April 13, 1974 | |
| The Lolly family, owners of a store that sells adverbs, demonstrate their product. Bob Dorough provides the voices of all three generations of Lollys at various speeds. | ||||||
| 18 | 7 | "Rufus Xavier Sarsaparilla" | Jack Sheldon | Bob Dorough & Kathy Mandry | April 27, 1976 | |
| Pronouns are stressed by a trio with long names: Rufus Xavier Sarsaparilla, his sister Rafaela Gabriela Sarsaparilla and their friend (and narrator) Albert Andreas Armadillo, along with their pets consisting of a kangaroo, an aardvark and a rhinoceros. | ||||||
| 19 | 8 | "Busy Prepositions" | Bob Dorough & Jack Sheldon | Bob Dorough | October 23, 1993 | |
| A horde of working ants called "The Busy P's" teach about prepositions while on the job. | ||||||
| 20 | 9 | "The Tale of Mr. Morton" | Jack Sheldon | Lynn Ahrens | December 11, 1993 | |
| A single man named Mr. Morton is the subject of a series of sentences describing his life and courtship with a neighbor. The episode illustrates the grammatical constructs of subject and predicate. | ||||||
America Rock, Season 3 (1975–76, 1979, 2002)
| No. overall | No. in season | Title | Music by | Lyrics by | Original air date | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 21 | 1 | "No More Kings" | Lynn Ahrens and Bob Dorough | Lynn Ahrens | September 20, 1975 | |
| An abridged history of the Thirteen Colonies is presented, beginning with the arrival of the Pilgrims and spanning through to just before the American Revolutionary War. | ||||||
| 22 | 2 | "The Shot Heard Round The World" | Bob Dorough | Bob Dorough | October 18, 1975 | |
| This song teaches about the American Revolution. | ||||||
| 23 | 3 | "The Preamble" | Lynn Ahrens | Lynn Ahrens | November 1, 1975 | |
| The events of the constitutional convention of 1787 and the Constitution of the United States that emerged from it are the topic of this song, with the lyrics of the chorus directly quoting the constitution's preamble and setting it to music. A small section of the preamble was cut to make the song scan better. | ||||||
| 24 | 4 | "Sufferin' Till Suffrage" | Essra Mohawk | Bob Dorough & Tom Yohe | February 21, 1976 | |
| In this song, a star-spangled dressed woman teaches and sings about the steps women took to get their right to vote. | ||||||
| 25 | 5 | "I'm Just a Bill" | Jack Sheldon & John Sheldon | Dave Frishberg | March 27, 1976 | |
| A proposed transportation bill, depressed about the long and arduous legislative process and eager to be signed into law, sits on the steps to Capitol Hill and laments his plight to a young boy standing nearby, explaining the legislative process along the way. To his delight, the bill is signed into law at the end of the song. | ||||||
| 26 | 6 | "The Great American Melting Pot" | Lori Lieberman | Lynn Ahrens | May 1, 1976 | |
| This song teaches about Immigration in America, using the extant analogy of a melting pot (stirred by the Statue of Liberty) to describe how multiple cultures assimilated into each other over the course of American history. | ||||||
| 27 | 7 | "Elbow Room" | Sue Manchester | Lynn Ahrens | May 22, 1976 | |
| This song teaches about the Westward Expansion, or moving south and west from the 13 original colonies. | ||||||
| 28 | 8 | "Fireworks" | Grady Tate | Lynn Ahrens | July 3, 1976 | |
| This song teaches about the Declaration of Independence. | ||||||
| 29 | 9 | "Mother Necessity" | Bob Dorough, Blossom Dearie, Essra Mohawk & Jack Sheldon | Bob Dorough | July 10, 1976 | |
| In a play on the adage "Necessity is the mother of invention," great inventions are set to a series of short, mostly unrelated songs tied together by the titular Mother Necessity (resembling Whistler's Mother), who keeps pictures of the inventions on her wall. In several of the songs, fictionalized accounts describe how struggles of the inventors' mothers inspired major inventions by Samuel Morse, Thomas Edison, Elias Howe and the Wright Brothers. | ||||||
| 30 | 10 | "Three Ring Government" | Lynn Ahrens | Bob Dorough | March 13, 1979 | |
| Debuted during season 4. In this song, a boy introduces the branches of the United States Government, using a three-ring circus as a model. | ||||||
| 31 | 11 | "I'm Gonna Send Your Vote to College" | Jack Sheldon & Bob Dorough | Bob Dorough & George Newall | August 27, 2002 | |
| This song teaches about the electoral college. Created in response to the controversial 2000 Election; it was featured in the 30th anniversary special video as a bonus. | ||||||
| 32 | 12 | "Presidential Minute" "The Campaign Trail" | Jack Sheldon | George R. Newall & Tom Yohe Jr. | August 27, 2002 | |
|
This song teaches about voting for president. The song was originally recorded in 1996 as "The Campaign Trail". The animated episode was released to DVD in 2002 as "Presidential Minute". | ||||||
Science Rock, Season 4 (1978–79)
| No. overall | No. in season | Title | Music by | Lyrics by | Original air date | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 33 | 1 | "A Victim of Gravity" | The Tokens | Lynn Ahrens | September 16, 1978 | |
| In the late 1950s, a greaser experiences misfortune due to things constantly falling as he courts his poodle skirt-wearing cheerleader girlfriend, Mary Jean. The song superficially describes gravity and its contributions to keeping things attached to Earth and in orbit in outer space, also noting Isaac Newton and Galileo Galilei's contributions to modern understanding of the concept. | ||||||
| 34 | 2 | "Interplanet Janet" | Lynn Ahrens | Lynn Ahrens | November 18, 1978 | |
|
An anthropomorphic comet with a rocket tail skirt, wings, cloud puffy hair, and a humanoid head explores the solar system, getting an autograph from the sun (because it is, literally, a star) and visiting each planet. In bypassing Earth, she is mistaken for a UFO by the "weird" Earthlings. Near the end, it mentions the possible existence of exoplanets in other solar systems. "Interplanet Janet" became outdated within three months of its first airing, due to Pluto being mentioned as the ninth and farthest planet from the sun; on February 7, 1979, Pluto's orbit came closer to the sun than Neptune's, a situation that remained until Pluto moved further out on its elliptical orbit in 1999.[4] The existence of exoplanets, which in 1978 were only speculated to exist and never observed, was eventually confirmed in 1992. In 2006, similarly-sized Eris was discovered well beyond Pluto's orbit and was classified, along with Pluto, as a dwarf planet, thereby reducing the official planet count to eight; this was long after the series left television. It was always aired intact, but structured so that the Pluto section could be edited out without clear inconsistency. | ||||||
| 35 | 3 | "The Body Machine" | Bob Dorough & Jack Sheldon | Lynn Ahrens | January 6, 1979 | |
| This song teaches about our bodies' digestive process and nutritional needs. | ||||||
| 36 | 4 | "Do The Circulation" | Joshie Armstead, Mary Sue Berry & Maeretha Stewart | Lynn Ahrens | March 20, 1979 | |
| This song teaches about our bodies' circulatory system, in the style of an exercise video. | ||||||
| 37 | 5 | "The Energy Blues" | Jack Sheldon | George Newall | March 27, 1979 | |
| Earth, portrayed with a human face, tells the history of energy production and consumption in the world and raises concerns about the environment and future energy crises. | ||||||
| 38 | 6 | "Them Not So Dry Bones" | Jack Sheldon | George Newall | May 5, 1979 | |
| This song teaches about the human skeleton; the song is based on the traditional song "Dem Bones." | ||||||
| 39 | 7 | "Electricity, Electricity" | Zachary Sanders | Bob Dorough | May 19, 1979 | |
| This song teaches about the use of electricity and the concepts (such as voltage and current) behind it. | ||||||
| 40 | 8 | "Telegraph Line" | Jaime Aff & Christine Langner | Lynn Ahrens | June 30, 1979 | |
| The human nervous system is personified as a messenger delivering telegrams to and from the brain, passing along messages representing pain, heat and stage fright. | ||||||
| 41 | 9 | "The Greatest Show on Earth" "The Weather Show" | Bob Kaliban | Lynn Ahrens | July 14, 1979 | |
|
This song teaches about weather. Some time after 1987, "The Greatest Show on Earth" was pulled from broadcast after Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus objected to the name, as the circus owned a trademark on the phrase. It did not air on television during the 1990s revival, nor was it included on most VHS releases after that date. On the DVD release of the series, it is included as a separate lost episode, using the name "The Weather Show." | ||||||
Computer Rock, Season 5 (1982–84)
| No. overall | No. in season | Title | Music by | Lyrics by | Original air date | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 42 | 1 | "Introduction" | Darrell Stern & Bob Kaliban | Bob Dorough, Lynn Ahrens & Tom Yohe | 1982 | |
| This song teaches about the computer, introducing the recurring characters Scooter Computer and Mr. Chips. (This episode was left off of the DVD release, reportedly due to ABC having lost the master tape. Darrell Stern, the voice of Scooter Computer, preserved a copy on VHS and posted it to YouTube.[5]) | ||||||
| 43 | 2 | "Hardware" | Darrell Stern & Bob Kaliban | Lynn Ahrens | 1982 | |
| This song teaches about your computer's software and hardware. | ||||||
| 44 | 3 | "Software" | Darrell Stern & Bob Kaliban | Dave Frishberg | 1983 | |
| Mr. Chips explains the basics of binary code and programming languages, and how those languages (mentioning the then-ubiquitous BASIC as an example) serve as an intermediary between the binary machine language the computer uses and the human English language. | ||||||
| 45 | 4 | "Number Cruncher" | Darrell Stern & Bob Kaliban | Dave Frishberg | 1984 | |
| Scooter Computer has been assigned statistician duties for his baseball team, and Mr. Chips explains how computers make the job of calculating statistics easier and quicker. | ||||||
Money Rock, Season 6 (1994–96)
| No. overall | No. in season | Title | Music by | Lyrics by | Original air date | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 46 | 1 | "Dollars And Sense" | Bob Dorough & Val Hawk | Dave Frishberg | May 7, 1994[3] | |
| An aspiring country musician consults a banker on how to raise enough money to buy the equipment she needs to become a star; the banker introduces her to the banking system, suggesting a savings account that will earn interest, or a loan with a 10 percent flat interest rate. The punchline is that when she does buy the equipment, her farm lacks the electricity to operate it, with the singer advising the listener to use "a little bit of common sense." | ||||||
| 47 | 2 | "Tax Man Max" | Patrick Quinn | Lynn Ahrens & Stephen Flaherty | June 26, 1995 | |
| A small, cute, sweet, and portly clown-like vaudeville star named Max and his 5 girlfriends, Tracy (dark skin), Annie (blonde hair), Kathy (tan skin), Joy (orange hair), and Natalie (red hair) explain how taxes are collected and how the revenue from those taxes is used. It is performed at Broadway. | ||||||
| 48 | 3 | "Where The Money Goes" | Jack Sheldon | Rich Mendoza | July 13, 1995 | |
| A father explains to his son the numerous expenses a family incurs. | ||||||
| 49 | 4 | "$7.50 Once A Week" | Dave Frishberg | Dave Frishberg | October 23, 1995 | |
| A kid with a $7.50 weekly allowance has spent all of it far quicker than he wanted to; the song explores the concept of budgeting, showing the various ways the kid could have spent less money over the course of his week. | ||||||
| 50 | 5 | "Tyrannosaurus Debt" | Bob Dorough & Bob Kaliban | Tom Yohe | January 21, 1996 | |
| The song is a discussion of the continuous increases in the United States national debt, which is portrayed as an ever-growing Tyrannosaurus rex. Bill from "I'm Just a Bill" makes a cameo at the very end. | ||||||
| 51 | 6 | "This For That" | Bob Dorough | George Newall | May 6, 1996 | |
| This song teaches about the history of barter and trading as well as the evolution of the money supply throughout history. | ||||||
| 52 | 7 | "Walkin' On Wall Street" | Dave Frishberg | Dave Frishberg | September 12, 1996 | |
| A pigeon, who lives on Wall Street, also happens to be a savvy investor in the stock market, introducing to the audience the basics of investing in stock. | ||||||
| 53 | 8 | "The Check's In The Mail" | Luther Rix & Bob Dorough | Bob Dorough | November 22, 1996 | |
| This song teaches about the process a check goes through. | ||||||
Earth Rock, Season 7 (2009)
None of the Earth Rock episodes aired on television. This season was released direct-to-video. Between songs 8 and 9, "The Energy Blues" is featured.
| No. overall | No. in season | Title | Music by | Lyrics by | Original release date | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 54 | 1 | "Report from the North Pole" | Bob Dorough, Jack Sheldon, Bob Kaliban & Barry Carl | Bob Dorough & George R. Newall | March 31, 2009 | |
| This song teaches about global warming. | ||||||
| 55 | 2 | "The Little Things We Do" | Lynn Ahrens, Jack Sheldon, Bob Dorough, Bob Kaliban, Val Hawk, Vicki Doney & Nancy Reed | Lynn Ahrens | March 31, 2009 | |
| This song teaches about energy conservation. This serves as a sequel to "The Tale of Mr. Morton" as the titular character, Pearl, and the cat (named Orton) return, and the two humans have a son named Norton. | ||||||
| 56 | 3 | "The Trash Can Band" | Lynn Ahrens, Luther Rix, Bob Dorough & Eric Weissberg | Lynn Ahrens | March 31, 2009 | |
| A box, a bottle, a can, and a carton named Dolly sing about recycling. | ||||||
| 57 | 4 | "You Oughta Be Savin' Water" | Barry Carl, Sean Altman & Elliott Kerman | Sean Altman, Barry Carl & George R. Newall | March 31, 2009 | |
| Dewey Drop and the Dips sing about water conservation. | ||||||
| 58 | 5 | "The Rainforest" | Tituss Burgess | Lynn Ahrens | March 31, 2009 | |
| This song is about rainforests. | ||||||
| 59 | 6 | "Save the Ocean" | Sean Altman, Inna Dukach, Jon Spurney, Patti Rothberg, Barry Carl & Eric Booker | Sean Altman | March 31, 2009 | |
| This song is about oceans. | ||||||
| 60 | 7 | "Fat Cat Blue: The Clean Rivers Song" | Jack Sheldon, Bob Kaliban, Val Hawk & Vicki Doney & Nancy Reed | Andy Brick | March 31, 2009 | |
| This song is about marine debris. | ||||||
| 61 | 8 | "A Tiny Urban Zoo" | Barrett Foa, Shoshana Bean & George Stiles | Anthony Drewe & George Stiles | March 31, 2009 | |
| This song is about gardens. | ||||||
| 62 | 9 | "Solar Power to the People" | Lynn Ahrens, Val Hawk, Vicki Doney & Nancy Reed | Lynn Ahrens | March 31, 2009 | |
| Interplanet Janet from the song of the same name returns in this song about solar energy. | ||||||
| 63 | 10 | "Windy and the Windmills" | Bob Dorough, Jack Sheldon, Val Hawk, Vicki Doney & Nancy Reed | Bob Dorough & George R. Newall | March 31, 2009 | |
| This song is about wind power. | ||||||
| 64 | 11 | "Don't Be a Carbon Sasquatch" | Bob Dorough | Bob Dorough | March 31, 2009 | |
| This song is about the carbon footprint. | ||||||
| 65 | 12 | "The 3 Rs" | Bob Dorough | Bob Dorough | January 1, 2009 | |
| Live action music video "Three Is the Magic Number" (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) performed by Mitchel Musso. | ||||||
References
- "History of Schoolhouse Rock". School House Rock. 2008. Archived from the original on June 28, 2008. Retrieved 12 February 2011.
- Mackey, Dave (August 29, 2002). "Dave Mackey's Guide To Schoolhouse Rock". Dave Mackey Dot Com. Archived from the original on 2000-05-11. Retrieved 12 February 2011.
- Moore, Scott (1994-05-01). "'Schoolhouse Rock'". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2019-07-08.
- "Pluto to become most distant planet". JPL/NASA. January 28, 1999. Archived from the original on September 2, 2010. Retrieved January 16, 2011.
- "Scooter Computer and Mr. Chips: Introduction". Schoolhouse Rock. Retrieved 29 Sep 2017.
External links
- Official website
- Schoolhouse Rock! – list of episodes at IMDb
- List of Schoolhouse Rock! episodes at TV.com
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