Batuta — Columbia’s El Sistema. An Essay by Eric Booth and Tricia Tunstall


As I write, I am staring out the window on the 7:00 Acela heading to DC from New York Penn Station. I have a board meeting of Common Core, for which I am board treasurer. What was a sunny day in New York, has turned into a deep fog. The train moves through the fog like a bullet through space.

Oh, and let me make a plug for the upcoming report by Common Core on the narrowing of the curriculum. Salon.com recently published a nice little feature.

Fortunately, there is no fog to be pierced in Eric Booth and Tricia Tunstall’s essay Batuta, the Colombian version of El Sistema.

There will be few who don’t know Eric Booth. For those of you who are just being introduced to Tricia, she’s a friend of mine and a dear heart.

I am happy to share this essay with you.

And, while I remain a fan of El Sistema, and am very happy to know more about Batuta, it is impossible to miss the cruel irony of what is possible in third world countries, but not in the United States.

 

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