"Singing is not about yelling"
Having been an artsy-fartsy kid myself, I'm a big one for arts education in the schools. So I get invited sometimes to check out programs, like the Franklin Fine Arts magnet school and the Ravinia-sponsored Music Discovery Program.
Yesterday, I went to Cleveland Elementary, on the North Side, to visit Virginia Oviedo's 2nd grade class, where musician Tricia Sebastian has been teaching the kids all kinds of cool stuff using songs and instruments from around the world.
It's the sort of thing that sounds ridiculously PC and silly when described on paper -- yes, they learned a song in the Miriam Mir language from the Torres Strait Islands and a dance that celebrates Australian Harmony Day -- but is actually totally inspiring and cool in practice.
The kids, almost all of whom are Latino, were dressed in their quasi-uniforms of white shirts and navy blue pants. When I arrived, the kids were sort of squirmy and whiny in the way of seven year olds around the world. (News flash: little girls still make those foldy paper fortune teller things.) But when Ms. Tricia arrived and began to tune her guitar, they got impressively quiet.
And, when they started singing, it was amazing to see how the kids had total command of lyrics and hand movements that they'd learned months ago. Kids who might, in the context of a math class or a reading lesson, be convinced that they're not smart or can't learn, were busting out with total confidence and joy.
I'm a total sucker for this sort of thing, I know, but, as the kids were busy choreographing dance steps to a Brazilian song, I was thinking that maybe this is precisely the sort of stuff we shouldn't be eliminating.
If you haven't already seen it, check out this scary New York Times story about how schools are killing everything other than reading and math in order to keep up with No Child Left Behind requirements.
Where's the special interest teach-them-Miriam-Mir lobby when you really need it?
