The magic of El Sistema, Venezuela’s program of taking impoverished kids and teaching them classical music, can be summed up in one sentence uttered by its founder, Dr. Jose Abreu: “If you put a musical instrument in the hand of a kid, he or she will not pick up a gun.” It is somewhat of a miracle, although it is an old idea. The creative impulse (which resides in everyone) can act as a curandero, or healer, to re-imagine dead-end paths down which poor children are headed, and find new roads that are limitless. America is slow to realize this. With weak economic times, we always cut funding for the arts, when that is a time to increase fields that foster new imagination, new ways of thinking. Holding on to our narrow vision that South America stole our name, we know something is happening south of the border,
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