For Reginald Robinson, inspiration came in the 7th grade. A group of jazz musicians from the Urban Gateways program came to his West Side school and played Scott Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag.” That sparked a passion and, eventually, a kind of salvation. Today, the boy who grew up amid gangbangers in Chicago’s Henry Horner Homes is a celebrated ragtime composer. He received a $500,000 MacArthur Foundation “genius” award last year.
For Denyce Graves, it was singing in her Washington, D.C., public elementary school chorus. Today, the famous mezzo-soprano credits that choir, her mother and a special teacher who made the shy girl sing solos, as the provocateurs who propelled her out of poverty and into world-class accomplishment and fame.
It doesn’t take much effort to engage a child’s imagination. Sometimes just a flicker of exposure to some undiscovered world is all it takes to change a young life.
That’s what Chicago Public Schools Board President Michael Scott left the theater thinking three months ago after seeing a critically acclaimed documentary about a ballroom dancing program for New York City grade-school kids.
Now Scott plans to announce a program to teach 600 5th graders in 18 Chicago public schools the tango and samba. Cost: $200,000. That’s a modest endeavor in a $5 billion system with nearly 430,000 children. But that’s how worthwhile ideas start. The New York program that inspired the film, “Mad Hot Ballroom,” began in a single classroom 12 years ago; this year it will reach 11,000 city children.
The idea is to teach the fox trot and the merengue, yes, but a lot of other things, too. Discipline. Respect. Carriage. Confidence. Manners. Acting not so goofy around the opposite sex.
There are myriad offbeat programs in public schools that profoundly engage the most unlikely kids. East Harlem children playing beautiful violin. Poor Korean and Mexican 5th graders in Central Los Angeles performing Shakespeare.
Maybe a bit of that $200,000 could be set aside to send Mr. Scott to a few more documentaries.
