"Some have dealt with hardships in their young lives that I can't even imagine," says McNulty, principal of West Philadelphia's St. Francis de Sales. "They need someone or something to lift them up, and this program is doing that. I see smiles on faces I haven't seen smiles on in a long time."
This social salve, admittedly untested, comes from an unlikely source, one experiencing its own mighty struggle: classical music. St. Francis de Sales is the front line in a new war on social ills, an intensive after-school program called Tune Up Philly.
Curtis Institute graduate Stanford Thompson, 23, the engine behind the brand-new program, says, "Even within these few days we've seen some kids described as difficult turn themselves around."
A project of the Philadelphia Youth Orchestra, Tune Up Philly is giving 85 students in first through seventh grades free or nearly free musical instruction - chorus, ear training, and concentration on a single, chosen instrument - 21/2 hours a day, five days a week (plus five weeks of summer all-day sessions).
Brought to the school by Thompson, the program is a localized strain of the famed El Sistema program from the slums of Venezuela, a network of music-education sites, or nucleos, that has been hailed as both a revolutionary approach to music education and a powerful engine for social change.
Thompson says the program is about "casting the net" for talent as wide as possible and making instrumental music accessible to everyone.
"When I take the trolley home to West Philadelphia, I look around at all these people and I think, 'Why can't this trolley be filled with people having just heard the orchestra?' That's what you hear on the PATCO train, people talking about music. But why can't you hear this on the trolley to West Philly?"
