Does anybody else out there remember Square One?
Back in the day, someone thought the best way to teach kids about math was silly sketches, fast talker John Moschitta (whose last name I thought was "Ma-Cheetah," which seemed appropriate), Blackstone The Magician (was that his name?), writing eights funny (one circle then another circle, rather than a sideways infinity) and, of course, music videos:
I am the first to admit the only way I can retain academics is to learn them in song form. I can't do simple algebra, but I can do subtraction problems in base eight (New Math by Tom Lehrer). The basics of geometry are lost on me, but I can recite one hundred eightysomething digits of pi (Pi by Hard 'N Phirm). And, thanks to Animaniacs, I know the capitals of all fifty states (Wakko's America). I just can't tell you where in the country any of those states lie, because I know diddly squat about geography.
The thing is, I don't know if I ever retained anything from Square One. I mean, I watched the show religiously, but I can't recall ever learning anything about math from it. I don't think I realized that was the point. (What can I say? I just don't think about that kind of thing.)
I do remember it scaring me; one of the music videos (Youtube disabled the embed function on it, so I can't post it here) was called Ghost Of A Chance and was about a pizza delivery guy having to use probability to get through a haunted house. If the song got stuck in my head on any given day, I wouldn't be able to sleep that night. It got to the point where I'd run out of the room every time it came on (just like I did with Somebody's Watching Me by Rockwell and Jeopardy by Greg Kihn). Now I can't get enough of the creepy stuff, but when I was a kid I did almost everything I could to avoid it. (It still fascinated me, but I wanted to hear about it secondhand.)
Square One also had a song that made me cry:
It didn't occur to me that the show was trying to teach me that there was such a thing as negative numbers. First of all, I think I already knew that. More than that, though, it just seemed to me like they were picking on the guy. It wrecked me. In addition to being a sissy about scary stuff, I was also oversensitive to pretty much everything.
And I guess I still am. 'Cause I'm getting a little teary thinking about how I used to think Less Than Zero was such a sad song.
Yeah ... I think there's something wrong with me in the brain area.
The thing I remember most vividly about Square One is Mathman:
...but most people seem to remember Mathnet best.
I liked Mathnet but, like most of Square One, I'm not sure if I actually got it. I don't think I knew I was supposed to learn any math from it. I just knew it was a parody of Dragnet.
And, like everything else on the planet, there was an episode that scared me. In fact, my most vivid memory of Mathnet is not of the show itself, but of the tactic I used to avoid an episode.
The way Mathnet worked (at least, the way I remember it) was, one story was stretched out over the week in five parts. I swear one of the stories ended with people in a courtroom taking masks off, something that used to scare the crap out of me (it just looked to me like face removal). So I started paying attention and learned how the Monday episode of that Mathnet series started, then I just wouldn't watch all that week.
It's the same tactic I use today to avoid the dog episode of Futurama. If the episode starts and Bender's wearing a cape, I turn it off.
Anyway, Square One was cool. I miss it. I can't say I learned anything from it (nothing that stuck, anyway) but I bet if I watched it now I'd probably pick up some sweet math skills.
Now if only it'd come out on DVD.
Be seeing you.
-Sally
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