Surround children with the finest teachers, music, spaces, and audiences.
principle — attributed to J. Francisco Núñez
Núñez's operational principle for YPC is to surround children with the finest teachers, the most excellent music, the most beautiful spaces, and audiences that appreciate what they achieve. The four are a unit. Excellent teachers alone produce students whose work is unwitnessed. Beautiful spaces alone produce performances that never had to be earned. Appreciative audiences alone produce vanity without rigor. The combination produces children whose brains get bigger and whose lives change forever. The principle generalizes to any youth-development context. The environment around the work matters as much as the work itself.
For arts education leaders, youth program founders, and donors making investment decisions in youth development. The principle is most useful as an investment frame: spend on the environment around the practice, not just on the practice.
excellence, surrounding-environment, youth-programs, ypc-method