Street Symphony Brings Some of the World's Greatest Musicians to Skid Row

Robert Gupta at a recent visit to the GOOD office

Downtown Los Angeles is a neighborhood of extremes. On one end, there's the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Frank Gehry-designed home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Less than 10 blocks away is Skid Row, the nation's largest congregating spot for the homeless, where as many as 50,000 people can be found on the streets on any given night. Robert Gupta, the Philharmonic's first violinist, is hoping to bridge the gap between the two sides by taking "music out of the ivory tower" of the concert hall and bringing it to people who would never hear it otherwise. 

Gupta created the nonprofit Street Symphony, an ensemble of socially conscious musicians "dedicated to delivering the tremendous therapeutic power of live classical music to mentally ill individuals" in Los Angeles' poorest communities. Founded in 2011 by TED senior fellows Gupta and Adrian Hong, an activist for human rights in North Korea, the group performs concerts at clinics and shelters. 

Gupta joined the L.A. Phil in 2007 at age 19 after receiving a masters in music from Yale and studying neuroscience as an undergraduate. Gupta came to realize the transformative power of classical music in the lives of the mentally ill while working as the violin instructor for Nathaniel Ayers, a schizophrenic Julliard graduate who landed on Skid Row (and whose life was portrayed by Jamie Foxx in the 2009 film The Soloist).

"My challenge has been to go into these places where there is no access to music," Gupta says, recalling how terrified he was the first few times he took music outside of the concert hall. "In these spaced the music takes on a new meaning." Barriers come down. Veterans who suffer from PTSD and appear "glazed over" begin to connect emotionally with the music. "I feel like we're doing something profoundly important, profoundly beautiful, and profoundly therapeutic as well," he says.

A Street Symphony concert typically consists of performances by a string quartet or sextet, following by an opportunity for audience members to ask the musicians about the music. But often, the musicians are the ones doing the real learning. "Performing for these audiences has taught us why we make music," says Gupta. "It's a human service that allows us to reach a deeply ostracized community." 

GOOD Video: How Do We Make Learning Relevant to Students?

This post is in partnership with University of Phoenix

"I wanted to avoid the usual doom and gloom—the usual 'it's all crap and there's no hope for the future,'" says Eli A. Kaufman, GOOD's director of video production and the creator of our latest education micro documentary, "Future Learning". Instead of making a film about everything that's wrong with America's schools, Kaufman and his team set out to answer a key question: "How do we make learning more relevant to the lives of our students?"

However, Future Learning isn't about "educators in the classroom or about the out-of-the-box teachers who are pushing the envelope," says Kaufman. Instead, "it's about people who are out of the box of education completely who are trying to improve the system." The half-dozen education technologists Future Learning features are sparking conversation across the globe—innovators like Khan Academy founder Sal Khan, Sugata Mitra, an education scientist and professor at Newcastle University in the U.K., and Catherine Lucey, the vice dean for education at the University of California at San Francisco School of Medicine, who has come up with a pedagogical approach that employs technology that serves new models of learning—and not just for the sake of having the newest gadget in the lab.

Creating the film was personal for Kaufman—he's a new dad whose son will one day attend public school in Los Angeles, and, like many of us, he believes in lifelong learning. But, education's also in his blood—Kaufman's the son of two teachers, and before he became a filmmaker, he spent three years teaching eighth grade English "to Bridge and Tunnel kids" in New Jersey and a year teaching at a private experimental school in Los Angeles. The film stems from a series of minute-long webisodes that Kaufman’s team created for GOOD's education page partner, University of Phoenix. Because of his teaching experience, Kaufman realized that the footage being left on the cutting room floor could add value to the current education conversation.

Kaufman says the education innovators he filmed have a fresh perspective since they're "not right on top of the issues." However, their ideas aren't without controversy. At one point Mitra,—who is well known for his "Hole in the Wall" experiment where he put unattended computers in villages in India to see what kids would do with them—suggests that maybe we don't need teachers anymore. While that certainly pushes buttons, Kaufman says he had to step back and realize that what Mitra means is that the role of teachers has to change from that of lecturer to facilitator, mentor, and coach.

Kaufman says he can see how the innovators' lack of actual classroom experience might make some teachers reluctant to listen to their ideas. "They’ve never had to put together a lesson plan or a scope and sequence that would help a kid," Kaufman says. That doesn’t make their ideas less legitimate to Kaufman, but making the film made him realize that there are real limitations to tech-based solutions. A computer can't teach "those life skills that only a master teacher can teach"—and which require people to be in the same room—"how to become a citizen, how to problem solve, and learning how to be a collaborator," Kaufman says.

Above all, Kaufman's optimistic that the ideas shared will spark conversation about how we design a learning experience that matters to our students. "There are people who are really investing the time to make learning better," says Kaufman. "I hope other teachers feel that there's hope, too."

The Rules of: Going to a BBQ

Welcome to The Rules, an illustrated guide to modern etiquette.

Young Activists Care About Race, Gender, and the Economy—But Not the Election

 A new report from the Applied Research Center concludes that young progressive activists care about racial justice, class divides, and gender issues. They're worried about widespread ignorance, complacency, and the danger of unchecked capitalism. They also don't have much faith in Obama—or much use for the upcoming election.

The report was compiled using information from several focus groups of progressive activists in Portland, Oakland, Atlanta, Baltimore, and New York. The ARC chose participants (about half of them white, half people of color) with "experience as a paid employee, volunteer, or small donor of a social justice or community organization," or who had participated in the Occupy movement.

Responses to several questions were divided along racial lines; for instance, 81 percent of people of color said their activism was influenced by a personal or family experience, as opposed to 52 percent of white participants. Some answers were also split according to whether or not people were OWS-affiliated. Occupiers ranked racial justice as a lower priority than non-Occupiers. But one sentiment was virtually universal: The 2012 presidential election wasn't a major motivator for their work.

Whether or not participants planned to vote in 2012 often depended on whether or not they identified with Occupy Wall Street: Fewer OWS protesters said they would vote in the election. And the movement's participants were more likely to associate the words "corrupt" and "fraud" with the word "election" (see the word cloud above), whereas non-Occupiers had a more neutral reaction. But even the participants who do plan to show on Election Day aren't strongly backing a candidate. They uttered the famous line, "there is a lesser of two evils," or they think it'll prevent things from "becoming far worse." Some expressed more of an interest in voting for local politicians, because "you can go to the city council meeting and yell at them."

Perhaps the most ardent argument for voting in the entire report came from Manish, a 28-year-old South Asian-American non-Occupier, who said activists need to "take small steps to push the Democrats," like how "the Tea Party pushed the right to the right." Nobody seemed to have much faith in the system as it stood.

Back in November, we visited New York's Occupy Wall Street site and asked some of these same questions...and received many of the same answers. "He hasn’t done what he said he would, but he’s better than the other candidates," one person said of the president. "Obama will be easier to change than any Republican,” another hoped. But this was when the election was a full year away, before the president had a clear opponent and before we had to really think about our vote. It turns out the initial election effort hasn't swayed us much.

If this admittedly limited report is any indication, even (perhaps especially) the most politically aware and informed Millennials feel burned from 2008—maybe not by President Obama personally, but by the realization that federal politics are maddeningly stagnant and predetermined. We still hold the same values as we did four years ago, but the changes we hoped for seem impossible on the federal level. One of the participants, 26-year-old Chris, may have said it best: "We can't just put this guy in charge and forget about it. If we want things to change, we have to take it into our own hands."

Photo via (cc) Flickr user david_shankbone; word cloud image courtesy of the Applied Research Center.

How a National Alliance of Community Colleges Could Move the Country Forward

With an increasing number of recent high school graduates—and more experienced workers seeking to brush up on their skills—looking for affordable education options, community colleges have become a key to educating the workforce of the future. But despite increased demand—13 million students a year attend community college, up 9 percent since 2006—the recession has slashed community college budgets. Now, those schools are banding together to form Rebuilding America’s Middle Class, a nonprofit national coalition that plans to advocate for increased support for community colleges.

Students' ability to earn an affordable professional certificate or degree through a community college education is a critical part of building America's middle class. The average student can earn a professional certificate in a year for as little as $1,500, a crucial factor for the large number of low-income students of color who attend community colleges. Staying in school to earn an associate's degree or enough credits to transfer to a four-year school costs the average student between $7,000 and $8,000—less than half the cost for the same classes at most public four-year colleges. And those certificates and college credits qualify students for higher paying jobs.

Yet thanks to budget cuts, schools are being forced to take drastic measures simply to keep the lights on. Reeling from millions of dollars in cuts over the past few years, California's Santa Monica Community College faced harsh criticism for a recent plan to charge students four times more to take core classes because increasing the cost would make it much more difficult for low-income students to attend. SMCC was forced to abandon the proposal after the California attorney general declared it illegal, yet it's clear that schools need radical solutions to keep meeting student's needs.

The RAMC hopes to foster collaboration between community colleges and elevate their role in national education discussions through political advocacy. To that end, the group's inaugural meeting this week in Indianapolis will feature elected officials from Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels to Jamie Merisotis, president and CEO of the Lumina Foundation, which is committed to boosting college graduation rates. If they're successful, the coalition won't just boost community college graduation rates, but support the entire country's educational goals too.

Photo via (cc) Flickr user dave_mcmt