Schoolhouse
days
Schoolhouse
Rock got Christina Boenisch ('95) through her high school
government class.
While some
of her classmates struggled to remember the Preamble to the Constitution,
others like Boenisch bopped along to the Schoolhouse Rock
version.
"I
could see other people singing the 'Preamble' song, too," she
recalls. "I remember feeling sorry for the people who'd never
heard it before."
She passed
the government class and eventually earned a UNT degree in mathematics.
She now teaches high school math in Grapevine. And Schoolhouse
Rock is still a part of her life.
"I
remember all of the songs," she says. "My favorite is
the pronoun song called 'Rufus Xavier Sarsaparilla' - that's why
I named my cat Rufus.
"We
were calling him Rufus Xavier Sarsaparilla, but it was too long
just like the song. So now we call him Rufus," she adds.
Gotta love
those pronouns.
Schoolhouse
Rock has that kind of influence on thousands of today's adults
who grew up during the '70s and '80s when the songs aired on ABC.
Jason Rainey
('97) remembers waking up each Saturday morning at the slightest
hint of sunlight to watch cartoons.
"I
appreciate Schoolhouse Rock more now than I did as
a kid," he says. "There's something cool about this being
so fun, and yet there's this subliminal learning, too."
Rainey's
favorites were "I'm Just a Bill" and "Conjunction
Junction," both of which apply to his current work writing
political columns.
"I
can't say I went into my work because of Schoolhouse Rock,"
he says. "But I know it provided my first experiences with
government."
Boenisch
even hears some of her high school students humming Schoolhouse
Rock tunes today.
"They
may not know what a record is, but they've at least heard it on
CD or seen it on video," she says. "And that makes me
feel not so old."
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