Side Effects

We saw the movie Mad Hot Ballroom tonight. Delightful film - I recommend it highly. It's a documentary about a program in New York City to teach ballroom dancing to inner-city fifth graders. The project seems improbable on its face, but it turns out to be a big success. The children actually learn to dance: tango, meringue, rumba and others. The film also shows that hard work and discipline, acquired in the context of competition, can have side effects that are very beneficial. The children get some direction. They get a sense of pride in what they can accomplish. One girl who is described by her principal as having been a discipline problem in fourth grade is changed by her involvement in the dance program; she hasn't been in trouble all year. On the other hand, not everybody is helped. One boy who apparently has some talent as a dancer simply can't get into the dancing. As the competition draws near and team assignments have to be made, the teacher puts him on the spot: get serious about dancing or leave. He leaves. Later in the film he wishes the school's dance team well, but he says he himself is only interested in playing basketball.

The film resonated with me. For grades six through eight, I attended what was then known as the Columbus Boychoir School in Princeton, New Jersey. At that time - early '60s - the Columbus Boychoir was certainly one of the best boys choirs in the world, if not the very best. As a member of the choir, I toured the country and Europe, appeared repeatedly on national television, had the pleasure of appearing on stage with some of the best conductors and soloists in the world, including Erich Leinsdorf in Boston and Leonard Bernstein in New York. I was on stage as a member of the choir for the inaugural concert at Lincoln Center.

Now unlike the fifth graders who dance in Mad Hot Ballroom, we boychoir members were an elite. We auditioned to get into the school. And we worked hard, rehearsing three hours a day, six days a week. But just like the children in the movie, we boys in the choir learned a lot of fantastic life lessons, about discipline and hard work, about striving for excellence, about working with others as a member of a group, about living up to expectations, dealing with pressure, and more.

But to get the benefit of those lessons, I had to take the music seriously. The same is true of the children in New York. Administrators might institute a dance program with ulterior motives, but the program will surely be a failure if the children and their teachers don't take the dancing seriously.

This is true of many things in life. I learned a lot of indirect stuff about grammar, word roots, etc., from the study of Latin, but I wouldn't have learned that stuff if I hadn't been able to get interested in Latin in itself. I learned some great lessons from playing soccer for three years in high school, but again, I wouldn't have learned those lessons if I hadn't been able to get truly interested in soccer. If I hadn't cared about winning and about doing my best for the team while we were on the field, I wouldn't have had a reason to become as good a player as I was capable of becoming.

This is preeminently true of religion. Perhaps nothing else in life has the ability to have so profound an effect on your life as religion. When you believe in God and attend church, you learn to measure yourself against an impossible standard and strive to become better than you know you can be. You pray and learn to examine your own failings candidly and bravely. You learn humility. These are somewhat accidental benefits, but they are quite real. And yet, you can only realize these benefits if you can first take religion seriously.