I decided to tackle another difficult top ten and narrow down from the 70+ Schoolhouse Rock shorts my all-time favorites. It took me maybe ten minutes to narrow it down to twenty-five. From there I stared off into the distance and smiled, listening to each of the songs in my head, trying hard to trim my list down to ten. An hour later I had my ten. From there, I scrambled and rearranged the list until I was happy with the list you are about to see.

Schoolhouse Rock had a profound influence on me when I was a child. I remember seeing “Conjunction Junction” for the first time on a quiet Saturday morning before the lineup of cartoons was about to consume me for the next several hours. Having been a fan of “Sesame Street” since as long as I could remember the concept of using music and animation to teach me something was not new nor unique. However, like “Sesame Street”, the indisputable catchiness of the music roped me in and made me eager for more. I was hooked. I would no longer leave the room when the cartoon I was watching went to a commercial break. You couldn’t have dragged me away. I was there with my nose-pressed to the tube, anxiously awaiting the opening notes of Schoolhouse Rocky.

God I love these songs.

As I grew older I began to realize just how ingrained these tunes – and their lessons – had become in my life. I’d count by my 3s or 5s in the same manner as they were sung in “Three is a Magic Number” and “Ready or Not, Here I Come” respectively. I took to heart the “you should always say ‘thank you’ or at least say ‘please’” from “Conjuction Junction”. I even called upon “Mother Necessity” during school tests when asked to correctly identify the inventor of the steam engine and the radio (”when Robert Fulton made the steamboat go / when Marconi gave us wireless radio”). These brilliantly created vignettes even attributed to one of my favorite quarters in grade school history when I basically got to sit on my rump and do nothing.

On the first day of my eighth grade social studies class, my new teacher Mrs. Kohl announced that she would give 500 bonus points to anyone who could recite the Preamble to the Constitution word for word. Everyone, knowing that they couldn’t do it, laughed her off while I took a deep breath and raised my hand.

“Yeah right, Kenny. You don’t know it.”

Oh, but I did.

When Mrs. Kohl called upon me and asked “you really think you know it by heart?” I nodded and she asked me to stand to recite it.

I rose from my seat, took another deep breath and heard the song begin in my head. Stupidly, I began singing the first few words. Once I became conscious that I was actually trying to croon my way to 500 bonus points I quickly stopped, smiled and then began again…this time stripping out the singing.

As I recited the words verbatim I could hear the tune as well as see the cartoon in my head, leading me onward to my big prize of bonus points galore. Mrs. Kohl stood there in awe, as did several of my fellow classmates in front of me, as this freckled faced boy rattled off the entire preamble.

I nailed it. I got my bonus points. I didn’t have to do a thing that quarter (but I did nonetheless as social studies was one of my favorite classes). Thank you, Schoolhouse Rock!

When I had kids I made sure to get them started on these timeless classics. I can easily recall Alex sitting in front of the TV bopping his head to “Electricity, Electricity” as clearly as I can remember Gwen giggling at “Rufus Xavier Sarsaparilla” when they asked “who brought a rhinoceros on this bus?” At Christmas I introduced them to both Melissa and her daughter. Universally, these cartoons stand the test of time. The songs are just incredibly memorable and become engrained in your head with the same likability as any of Mozart’s melodies.

As if you couldn’t tell by now – I absolutely adore Schoolhouse Rock.

It is because of this unwavering love I have for them that made it very, very difficult to narrow it down to a top ten…let alone rank them in order of preference.

As if you couldn’t tell by now – I absolutely adore Schoolhouse Rock.

Here are, in alphabetical order, the results of my initial run-through to narrow them down to at least 25 (I even failed there and had 26): “A Noun is a Person, Place or Thing”, “Conjunction Junction”, “Do the Circulation”, “Elbow Room”, “Electricity, Electricity”, “Elementary, My Dear”, “Figure Eight”, “Fireworks”, “I’m Just a Bill”, “Interjections!”, “Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, Get Your Adverbs Here”, “Mother Necessity”, “No More Kings”, “Ready or Not, Here I Come”, “Rufus Xavier Sarsaparilla”, “Sufferin’ Till Sufferage”, “Telegraph Line”, “The Body Machine”, “The Energy Blues”, “The Great American Melting Pot”, “The Preamble”, “The Shot Heard ‘Round the World”, “Them Not-So-Dry Bones”, “Three is a Magic Number”, “Unpack Your Adjectives”, “Verb: That’s What’s Happening”.

After seeing just how lengthy my initial list was I knew that I was in for quite the task to narrow it down to just ten. I mean, these twenty-six songs find themselves randomly playing within my head quite often.

So, like I had to do while trying to narrow down my top ten favorite comedy movies I opted to create the criteria upon which I’d base my final ranking upon. Here’s what I came up with:

Music
More than anything I weighed how much I loved the music of each piece. Jazz virtuoso Bob Dorough laid down the majority of the music and lyrics for a good number of these masterpieces and I rank him up there with John Williams and Bob Conti for creating the music that has all but set up camp in my head for the majority of my life.

Cleverness
Imagine if someone came up to you and asked you to teach a child a basically unappealing school lesson, ala the multiplication tables. Now, further imagine if someone asked you to do this in the span of three minutes. Impossible, right? Not for the Schoolhouse Rock geniuses. I gave points to the shorts that tackled a tricky subject and managed to superbly get the message across effectively and efficiently.

Practicality
In the end, to act as a tie breaker, I awarded points to the shorts that I found myself using more often than not throughout my daily life. While the lessons learned about the stars from the likes of “Interplanet Janet” are good ones, they don’t hold as much weight as, say, learning how to quickly multiply the seemingly more difficult numbers by two as taught near the end of “Elementary, My Dear”.

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So without further adieu here they are in order from 10 to 1 with my breakdown on each short’s individual page:

10. The Shot Heard ‘Round the World
Take your powder and take your gun. Report to General Washington.

9. Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, Get Your Adverbs Here
Suppose you’re going nut-gathering; your buddy wants to know where and when…

8. Interjections!
So when you’re happy – hooray! Or sad – aww!

7. I’m Just a Bill
He signed ya, Bill! Now you’re a law. OH YES!

6. Verb: That’s What’s Happenin’!
I can take a noun and bend it, gimme me a noun! Bat, boat, rake and plow.

5. The Preamble
In 1787 I’m told our founding fathers all sat down and wrote a list of principles that’s known the world around…

4. Ready or Not, Here I Come
Five ten fifteen twenty twenty-five thirty thirty-five forty forty-five fifty fifty-five sixty sixty-five seventy…

3. Three is a Magic Number
Yes it is, it’s a magic number. Somewhere in the ancient, mystic trinity you get three…as a magic number.

2. Conjunction Junction
Conjunction Junction, what’s your function? Hooking up words and phrases and clauses…

1. Electricity, Electricity
When you’re in the dark and you want to see you need…eee-lectricity! Eeeeeeeeeee-lectricity!

Let the debate begin.