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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jack7" data-source="post: 5201365" data-attributes="member: 54707">To answer in general to what I'm trying to do. Some things (shows) we can watch or listen to the whole series because the series are short. Like we watched all of Kung Fu over a one month time period at lunch. It seems like there is a lot to many television series cause they go on for yearly seasons, but when you see them one hour at a time during lunch or breakfast, they go fast. Plus my kids loved Kung Fu so they kept after me to see it all. Same with some other shows.Other things are much too long to watch all of them. No time for all of it. Just want my kids to get a taste of em so they can understand the popular, historical, and technological culture of that age, how it got where it has, what it was like before, and so forth. Before I started doing this kinda thing, informally, a couple of years back my kids had the idea that the world started in the 1990s sometimes, that computers and televisions and space shuttles have always existed. Sure my parents and grandparents would tell em stories on occasion, so would I, but they didn't see a whole culture in which the world was radically different. (Cops with no on-board computers in their cruisers? Homes with no video game consoles? Planes that you fly with a simple stick and no instruments? Televisions with no remote controls, but knobs? What's a slide rule? Nobody used to wear seat belts while riding in cars? No cell phones? Kids nowadays are ignorant of a lot, because they don't often really see the difference between the world now, and the world then. My kids were shocked to see the first episode of the Wild, Wild West, because it was in black and white. My youngest daughter asked me if the whole show was like that and why? Why would they make a show in black and white when everything is really in color? And I showed em an old television in an old show the other day and they asked me what those knobs were and why was the TV so fat? And why did it stand on legs like that? Ignorance born of simple non-exposure.)So that's one of my points. I mean aside from the fact that having seen these shows now they like a lot of em. Not all, but most of em. My youngest daughter thought Kung Fu as good as Lost (I don't, but think it came close sometimes) and asked me why they didn't make Kung fu again? I get the chance to actively point out the real differences between my life as a kid, what I did and had, and what they do and have. And watch and listen to.On the other hand now we get to share the same basic popular culture and reference points. Now when I mention something as a reference, they're starting to get it. "Oh, you mean he's an idiot for doing that like that, like Wylie Coyote." "Yes dear, that's what I mean. It won't work. He's courting disaster." A lot of the phrases I use, they now get it. We were watching the Wild, Wild West yesterday at lunch and Jim shot a bronze statue that covered over a gold statue that the father had hidden from his cowardly son. (The statue was of the son.) My oldest daughter said, "How ironic dad. The bronze hid the gold and the shot disfigured the statue in the same place the guy was shot in the Civil War." I like seeing em notice that kinda thing, and a lot of old shows are just better written than many modern shows. (Not all modern shows cause I think modern television is undergoing a real renaissance, but old shows are good at things like irony. they often make insightful mental and psychological observations, rather than just being filled with nifty special effects and clever comments.)I'm having the explain far less of my references and it's like a little code I share with my kids. Kids at church or out in public or friends, they don't get what we're saying and ask what we mean by that, and my kids try and explain it to them.But I'm not saying don't let kids have their own present day culture. I'm not saying "replace current popular culture with old popular culture." I like a good deal of modern popular culture. I like Spongebob, and Lost. But I don't have to limit myself to it, nor do I hav'ta limit my kids to that. It's not either/or. I'm saying add on to it. Let em know the past and the present.Because the present is the way that it is because the past was the way it was.Anyways, here are my lists so far.I haven't included any books or films or music because they already have a Homeschooling Independent Reading Canon, and a Film and Music Canon. So when you guys suggest something good I haven't already got down, I just add them to that particular canon.I've included both old stuff and more recent stuff in these lists. Things I think are really good, important to know about, or important to the popular culture.By the way, do any of you guys or gals remember an old cartoon about a spaceship that looked like a submarine and had an hellaciously big gun that shot a huge energy beam out of the front of it? I'd like to remember what that was called if anybody knows.POPULAR AND HISTORICAL CULTURE CANON:Television: Rockford Files, Quincy, Emergency, Adam 12, Munsters, Addams Family, Kolchak the Night Stalker, McCloud, Mod Squad, Star Trek, Star Trek (TNG), Space 1999, Miami Vice, Hillstreet Blues, Combat!, Briscoe County Jr., Kung Fu, Wild, Wild West, Daniel Boone, UFO, Mystery Science Theater 3000, Get Smart, Batman, Lost, Battlestar Galactica (both versions, when appropriate), X-Files, Fringe, Dragnet, Streets of San Francisco, Banacek, A-Team, The Rifleman, High Chaparral, Happy Days, I Love Lucy, Carol Burnett, MacGyver, Magnum PI, Andy Griffith, Art Linkletter, Baa Baa Black Sheep, Beverly Hillbillies, Bewitched, Car 54, The Prisoner, Monty Python, Ironsides, FBI, Dick Cavet, Gilligan’s Isle, Gomer Pyle, Green Hornet, Howdy Doody, Hogan’s Heroes, The Fugitive, Jack Benny, Honeymooners, Good Times, Hawaii Five-O, Show of Shows, Wanted: Dead or Alive, Checkmate, Moonlighting, This is Your Life, Flipper, Lassie, You Are There, Ozzie and Harriet, Rawhide, Bonanza, Big Valley, Gunsmoke, Walt Disney Show, Twilight Zone, Scrubs, The Office, Seinfeld, Psyche, Burn Notice, All in the Family, Alfred Hitchcock, Bob Newhart, Cheers, Ed Sullivan, Odd Couple, Soap, Taxi, 24, Twin Peaks, WKRP in Cincinnati, Deadwood, M*A*S*H, Space Ghost Coast to Coast, Northern Exposure, Larry Sanders, Band of Brothers, Stargate SG1, Stargate Universe, Stargate Atlantis, The Shield, Everybody Loves Raymond,  The Wonder Years, Doctor Who, Over There, Carnivale, SmallvilleCartoons and Children: Captain Kangaroo, Superfriends, Thundarr, Conan, Batman (all time periods), Superman (all time periods), Land of the Lost, G-Force/Battle of the Planets, Hanna Barbera Cartoons and Shows, Banana Splits, Sesame Street, Dungeons and Dragons, Justice League, Three Stooges, Bugs Bunny/Roadrunner, Mickey Mouse, Mighty Mouse, Dangermouse, Herculoids, Space Ghost, Samurai Jack, Powerpuff Girls, X- Men, Fantastic Four, Spiderman, Popeye, Tom and Jerry, Transformers, Starblazer, Underdog, Jonny Quest, Fat Albert, Schoolhouse Rocks, G. I. Joe, Pinky and the Brain, Ren and Stimpy, Dexter’s Laboratory, The Tick, Spongebob Squarepants, Wolverine and the X-MenRadio: Green Hornet, Phantom, Mystery Theater, Lone Ranger, Jack Flanders (all), Buck Rogers,  Zero Hour, Weird Circle, Tales of the Texas Rangers, Superman, Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes, The Shadow, Sam Spade, The Saint, Philip Marlowe, Orson Welles, Jack Benny, Inner Sanctum, Have Gun will Travel, Dick Tracey, Dimension X, Escape, Abbot and Costello, Flash Gordon, Burns and Allen</blockquote>

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