ANDY DISCOVERS AMERICA from The Andy Griffith Show (1963)
The Andy Griffith Show is one of my all-time favorite comedy TV series...at least the episodes that featured Don Knotts as bumbling, fastidious Deputy Barney Fife. This one was from Season 3 and originally broadcast in early 1963...Fife was a secondary character in this episode, but his contribution to it is what inspired me to pick it for this week's article. In the mythical North Carolina town of Mayberry, Sheriff Andy Taylor's little boy Opie joins his classmates in rebelling against their new teacher Helen Crump after his dad makes a careless remark belittling the study of history. When Helen angrily confronts Andy over the incident, he contritely decides to make the study of American history more interesting to his son. Barney brings up the comic relief: after first bragging about his history prowess, Andy tests him about the Emancipation Proclamation...after hemming and hawing about what it is, he decides to make it "his" topic for the rest of the episode. Poor Barney...it's obvious the words sounded impressive to him and he thought that dropping them around others would make him sound more learned. But suppose he really was interested and knowledgeable about President Lincoln's 1863 executive decree during the Civil War, designed to outlaw slavery in seceding states while allowing it to remain in slave states loyal to the Union. It's an interesting topic, but since it's something that was a typical part of school curricula, then adults tend to shun any discussion of it. Andy instead gets Opie enthusiastic about history by inventing a lot of exciting made-up stuff that only marginally rings of truth. As for here and now, try bringing up in conversation with other adults the Emancipation Proclamation, foreign language grammar elements, math concepts like quadratic equations and techniques of integration, types of chemical reactions or anything else that may have been something that students in school had been assigned to learn...even with those adults whose fields coincide with the subject matter...and it is certain that you will be rebuffed. Instead grownups are chiefly concerned in conversation about pridefully crowing over their own titles and wealth status along with career and academic milestones and awards they've received...not the actual things they devoted so much time and effort to learn in their youth: it's almost as if school-learned content were taboo in social intercourse...
I enjoyed this episode a lot in spite of Barney getting dissed on his adopted, treasured history topic: I feel your pain, bro...
