When the University of Michigan Used Schoolhouse Rock to Teach Med Students
The series that was fun for kids on Saturday mornings ended up illustrating complex lessons for future doctors at the University of Michigan.
If you know that a noun is a person, place or thing (and still sing it), if you learned about conjunctions from a train engineer, if you remember that the man who invented the sewing machine's first name is Elias and his mother is Necessity your childhood was awesome.
We grew up learning math, science, grammar, civics, history and more by watching some or all of the Schoolhouse Rock shorts from 1973-1986. In just 3 minutes you could learn where to get your adverbs and why three is the magic number and nine is naughty. It wasn't just for fun, though. "Creators Tom Yohe and George Newall wrote in their official guide to the show, "various governmental and lobbyist groups requested cassettes of ‘I’m Just a Bill’ to use in their training programs for staffers. The University of Michigan Medical School and Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons called to ask for ‘Telegraph Line’ to help introduce the nervous system to first-year medical students." Mental Floss uncovered those facts and offer 13 more things you didn't know about the show HERE.
I watched almost all of the Schoolhouse Rock episodes as a kid and confess I always wanted them to swear on "Interjections" and still feel proud when i see Bill finally become a law.