摘要:Venezuela's government-funded, national music education program, El Sistema,
has attracted worldwide attention because of its purported success in ‘saving’
children from lives filled with drugs, violence, and crime. It does this by giving them
the opportunity to play in an after-school orchestra, one to four hours a day, five to
six days a week. This article describes the program’s organizational philosophy and
mission, and accounts for its day-to-day activities in order to explore how these
programmatic aspects may positively contribute to participant engagement in
Paulo Freire’s notion of praxis, that is, “reflection and action upon the world in
order to transform it” (Freire and Ramos, 2004, p. 51). Additionally, other
programmatic aspects of El Sistema are highlighted to help link the program with
previous research on improving students’ social behavior and cognitive
development. Finally, the article discusses some of the program’s strengths and
weaknesses and how it plays a role in Venezuelan society, interacting not only with
the community of students and parents, but also with national and local
governments and the private business sector. In doing so, El Sistema is
contextualized within its social environment and conclusions are drawn on the
potential for success and replicability in other cities and countries.