The Andy Griffith Show originated as an episode of The Danny Thomas Show,, Andy Taylor guest-starring on the show to arrest one of the characters – the spinoff became an entire series made up of 8 seasons and 249 episodes (IMDb). The Andy Griffith Show first aired on CBS in 1960 and ran until 1968. The show was corporately sponsored by General Foods, a former American manufacturer of grocery products that was bought out by another company in the 1980s (General Foods Corporation). The show is a comedy based on the main character Andy, a widowed sheriff of a fictional town of Mayberry in North Carolina that doesn’t see much crime — most of the show is spent between Andy and Barney, his cousin and a deputy, and Andy and his son, Opie. The father and son live with Aunt Bee, another main character of the series. Andy is well liked and respected within his community for his ability to settle community problems, and a menace to local criminals like moonshiners and outlaws that he must reprimand. Like most shows of the time, its purpose was to end with some type of lesson that not only the characters, but also the audience, could take away and implement into their own lives. The show invokes a feeling of a nostalgia, focusing on the old South, the way of life and the morals that were represented during the time.

Season 3 episode 23, Andy Discovers America, starts with Opie telling Andy his troubles with his history teacher, saying she gives too much homework. Andy tells Opie simply to try his best, that history is hard for everyone – Opie takes his dad’s words as an excuse not to do his homework. Opie goes to class the following day unprepared and is singled out by the teacher because of it. After Opie tells the teacher what he perceived his dad to say, that history isn't important, the teacher pays a visit to the Sheriff to confront him over what happened in class. Word spreads across town that the teacher is going to quit because of the incident, and Andy tells Opie and his friends that they should celebrate! Andy tells the boys that there is a possibility that the new teacher, if they even get a new one, may not give any homework because of the way the treated the last. He reels the boys in by telling them that they definitely don’t want to learn about Red Coats and Indians and guns – the boys’ interest is sparked, and they beg Andy to tell them more. Andy mentions “the shot heard around the world,” and the boys (including Barney) decide this is the story they must hear. Andy tells the story of the founding of America, and the boys seem to crave more information. Andy, without saying it explicitly, teaches the boys that history is both important and interesting. He introduces the idea of the “Mayberry Minutemen,” a play-off of the historical Minutemen, an invite-only group made up of the boys who took studying seriously and were always ready with the answers. The boys love the idea, Opie even insisting that the boys who don’t join the club are the British. The next day, the boys are anxious to show off their newly acquired knowledge, even arguing with each other over who were the first real Americans. The teacher is obviously impressed, and it is implied that she isn’t leaving the job after all.

_____________________________

The 1960s was a time of high tensions in race relations. While African Americans were making great legal and legislative progress, white society was not yet ready to accept the African Americans’ equal status. Differences in employment, education, healthcare, and living situations were still widely seen during this time period. The Andy Griffith Show, instead of bringing light to these issues, completely avoided topics of race and segregation — it’s never mentioned or portrayed in the show. In this particular episode, Andy asks Barney to tell Opie what the Emancipation Proclamation was: not only was Barney (or the rest of the table) unable to tell what the Proclamation was, but Andy even tells Barney “not to worry about the Emancipation Proclamation,” and Barney’s snarky reply was, “oh, I won’t!” The show, with an all-white case, only gave African Americans background character roles and only one African American had ever had a speaking role on the show. The show, like most Americans of the 1960s, wanted to avoid race tensions in hopes that it would all go away so they could return to their normal lives. The nostalgia invoked attempted to bring Americans back to the “good days” where race was simply not a topic of discussion — Americans didn’t want to hear it, and so the producers decided not to say it. The Andy Griffith Show reinforced the social construction of an all-white society, which is probably one of the many reasons it captured such a large audience – the American people wanted something that reminded them of how wonderful a white life was before the Civil Rights Movement and the series gave them just that. Based on this, it is safe to assume that the target audience was intended to be a white audience. The whitewashed cast and the ignorance towards African American life and history were a ploy to get the average African American to skip the station when they saw the legendary title or heard the classic theme song. While not directly, the show indirectly perpetuates white supremacy and the inferiority of African Americans.

Andy does something dumb when he counsels Opie about his dry, boring history homework. He feels it's above his age level and tells Opie he felt the same when he was in school. Opie takes this the wrong way and tells the teacher he doesn't have to do history work because his dad said so. Since Andy's the sheriff, the kids take this as a get out of history free pass.

The teacher, Miss Crump, catches up with Andy and reads him the riot act. To fix what he's done, Andy tells the boys stories about history that engage their attention, then lets them join his secret history "club" and act out the parts.

The teacher remarks on their sudden interest in learning the subject and Andy gets the chance to explain how to keep children engaged.

This is an age old problem and is still a problem. People who know a lot of factual information often don't know how to teach that information in a way kids care about. Lists of names and dates to memorize had me dreading history class as well. Too bad my teachers didn't know Andy's secret.