denly the student understands that history is not full of faded figures in a book, or wax dummies, but people-people who coughed, and sneezed, and got scared, and cried, and stubbed their toes, and were human.

Miriam Cherin, general manager, the Vanguard Theater

We have a small company of nine people. The 3 actors and 1 actress are sometimes called upon to play 12 roles between them in 1 production. We also have three professional stagehands and two technical people who travel with the company. A scene designer, a voice and speech coach, a music consultant, and a sound consultant are on call. Our operation is not as tremendous and overwhelming a problem as you might think, particularly if there is a community theater or a resident theater or a university theater in your area that you can work with, as we have with the Pittsburgh Playhouse.

We have worked primarily with the 17 public high schools in Pittsburgh. We have a budget of about $60,000. We charge $600 a performing day, and this includes the auditorium production and six classroom presentations. From these figures you can see that these things can be handled by school systems within existing budgetary limitations.

III. Music

Coleman Blumfield,' consultant, Residential Living and Counseling Branch, Office of Economic Opportunity, 1200 19th Street NW., Washington, D.C. 20506

I am well aware of the great performing arts centers that are springing up in the United States and of the millions of dollars that are being spent.

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But it seems to me that a great gap exists when it comes to bequeathing this cultural heritage, whether it be drama, dance, or music, to our young people. It is my contention that the performing arts can be presented to young children of every socioeconomic group. don't care whether they're “disadvantaged" or whether they're from the most sophisticated neighborhoods. They will respond, and respond spontaneously, if the work is presented properly.

My first 2 years as artist-in-residence to the city of Flint were devoted to professional performances for the

Coleman Blumfield has recently concluded a concert tour, under OEO sponsorship, of some 25 Job Corps centers and communities. Prior to this be was for 3 years artist-in-residence to the city of Flint, Mich.

adult population and to workshops or master classes for the talented piano students of Flint and its surrounding areas. Toward the end of my second year of residence, however, I tried an experiment.

Flint is, as you may know, the hometown of General Motors. The Greater Flint population is approxi mately 400,000, and there are about 50 elementary schools, 3 senior high schools, and about 10 junior high schools, along with a junior college, and a University of Michigan extension. As an experiment, I scheduled myself into the three senior high schools, during school hours, to perform an assembly program. I played works of the same standard as those I have played in Carnegie Hall or here in Constitution Hall. And the kids stood up and yelled in a way the Flint public schools had never heard before.

As a result, with the financial help of the city's businessmen and cultural leaders and with the blessing and cooperation of the Flint Board of Education, we began a systematic series of classical concerts in all the Flint schools-public and parochial. We performed for chil. dren who ranged in age from prekindergarten to college kids. An interesting thing about the 45,000 kids we reached the first year was that I personally received over 3,000 letters, and very few were written because "the teacher told me" to write them. And there were letters from parents, the school board, and from many of the civic leaders, too.

These performances were not just cold playing. I spoke to the children briefly of the merits of attending concerts, plays, art institutes, museums, going into the literary classics, and touched on some nontechnical information concerning the work and the composer. I tried, where I could, to draw the teachers in so that they could lead from a performance of, say, a Prokofiev sonata, into an historical discussion of that particular era-1939-42-in the Soviet Union.

The first year I began with a Schumann arabesque, a Chopin ballade and then the entire Pictures at an Exhibition of Mussorgsky. This last work alone runs about 30 minutes. The second year we expanded. We did a Bach organ toccata and fugue, a large Chopin work, and an entire contemporary sonata. In the elementary schools, we did not lower the standard; we just chose classical works of shorter duration. Besides the personal rewards that I received through letters and comments, there was a very marked increase in the number of young children going to the Art Institute of Flint and to concerts in Ann Arbor and Detroit. Flint is a bit deficient right now in theater, but they were attending some of their own school performances and they

were going to concerts. Little by little, we began to see the results of this unique program.

Last summer, I became very concerned about the young people in the poverty war, and within 3 weeks of my initial contact with the Office of Economic Opportunity I was off on a first Job Corps tour. I went into areas that I don't think are even on the map, besides going into the large cities. And the reception was not just a polite acceptance; these Job Corps youngsters stood up and yelled as if somebody had hit a home run. Young corpsmen are writing to Mr. Shriver, and they are writing to me, asking, “When are we going to have more?"

And now Congress has legalized the performing arts in education, through passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of last year. And it is time now that we have a fruitful marriage. We wish, as performing artists, to build audiences that will fill to the brim the cultural centers that are coming up now. You, as educators, are in a unique position because you can make it possible for us to work together. There is nothing frightening about the performing arts; on the contrary, they provide education with marvelous re

source materials, and with a marvelous motivational force. I can see no more perfect union in this country, at the present time, than that now coming into existence between the performing arts and the educators. I only wish that we had had this opportunity when we were all going to school.

When you are applying for artistic performances to be brought into the schools, however, please make sure that the experience will be of the highest professional excellence. Because it is very easy to introduce mediocrity in the arts, as in anything else. There is plenty of mediocrity around waiting to get a foothold and, once it does creep in, it's twice as hard to dislodge it as it would have been to provide excellence in the first

encounter.

You may have to do some negotiating as far as fees are concerned, but our great American artists are available to the schools, if you want them. It seems to me that Title I of the new education act offers you the means to bring these people within reach of young people every. where. Through them, we can build a new and fantastically productive cultural era in the United States.

Throughout history, we seem to have revered and honored education-and almost in the same breath we have also seemed to be damning the schools. (It's remotely possible, of course, that some of you have observed this phenomenon yourselves.)

Henry Adams-who thought well of education since he entitled his autobiography The Education of Henry Adams-asserted nonetheless that "the chief wonder of education is that it does not ruin everybody connected with it-teachers and taught."

Diogenes called education the foundation of every State. In fact, it was a truism among the ancient Greeks that only the educated are free. Yet Socrates was executed by the Athenians as a corrupter of youth— perhaps the first in a long line of martyrs to progressive education.

Our own American scholars, such as Jefferson and Emerson, have been loud in their advocacy of education and merciless in their criticism of "the academies."

You, as school officials, can undoubtedly call to mind a few other slings and arrows closer to your own time and circumstance.

We should remember, however, that this seeming contradiction in attitudes does not spring entirely frora some innate perversity in man. The truth is that educational methods have never been good enough-and indeed may never be good enough to feed man's insatiable hunger for knowledge and wisdom and useful skills.

The ideal, of course, is an educational system that will train, rather than chain, the human mind; that will uplift, rather than depress, the human spirit; that will illuminate, rather than obscure, the path to wisdom; that will help every member of society to the full use of his natural talents.

The desire to bring the reality of education closer to the ideal is here-as it has always been. But the gap between the two is better perceived and defined, I believe, than ever before.

Educators are being called upon to find ways to close the gap as they have always been. But we are closer to a true understanding of the methods than before. Most important, we today have the opportunity, and the means, to put those ways to work throughout the Nation.

We see education, or the lack of it, as part of a larger social service system that has inadequacies—particularly for the poor in this affluent America. And so we have moved in numerous ways to improve those social services in health, in welfare, in housing, in consumer protection, in urban development, in transportation. I need not tell you that a sick or a hungry child is never an eager or an alert learner.

In the field of education for the disadvantaged, the sixties have brought new programs and major improvements in old ones-Area Redevelopment Act training programs: Manpower development and training, economic development, vocational education, library services and the whole range of antipoverty programs, including Head Start, Job Corps, Neighborhood Youth Corps, adult literacy, Upward Bound—and many more.

And to climax it all, we enacted the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965.

Of course, the exciting thing about the Elementary and Secondary Education Act is not merely that it offers aid to education. Through Title I of that act— with which you are primarily concerned here this Nation has begun to clarify and define the true role of education in America.

It rejects the idea that the school is a mere facet of community life.

It rejects the idea that education is but a reflectionand a delayed reflection at that-of American thought. It expresses, instead, an understanding-not new in American life, but sometimes obscured-that education must lead rather than lag; that it is an instrument of creation rather than a mirror only, of the American dream.

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