Robert Stephenson, founder of the musical movement known as Blast Beat, has this outlandish idea that the world can unite by music!  The Blast Beat movement started in Ireland and has since spread like racism all around the world, now they have chapters everywhere from South Africa to South Central. Okay, so the musical movement has had minor success in engaging young men and women to express themselves musically- but that's not going to bring peace to the Middle East, right? Hahaha, have you seen the news- imagine Stevie Wonder playing the harmonica on the Gaza Strip attempting to harmonize with the Hamas missles flying overhead? Yeah right! The world could never come together on one accord - so I know they couldn't come together on one chord. Or at least, that's what AP stories would have you believe.

Well, it seems something must be in the tap water here in Dublin because Mr. Stephenson isn't the only person thinking the world can be brought together. Today I had the luxury of visiting the school. A beautiful educational institution founded by Edmund Rice, built on the solid foundation that uneducated Irish citizens can pull themselves up by their bootstraps if they have the necessary education made available. This idea flew as Rice developed a following called the Christian Brotherhood. This group saw that this idea would be carried on long past Edmund Rice's death- and it has. As Ireland's social landscape has changed drastically since the founding of the school, the school's ideals have slightly altered too. Now the administrators believe the world's people can pull themselves up by their boot straps if given the opportunity to do so- and they have!

I entered the English classroom full of teenage boys during the attendance roll call, and lost all hopes of ever being a substitute teacher here - the names were all over the place. The students were from everywhere. I searched for comparisons for hours: it was like taking a New York subway train and dropping it in the middle of the San Francisco Bay Area; it was like Captain Planet's dream come true; it was like God told Noah, "on second thought, give me two of each kind of young man from all around the world in order to educate them, and then send them back to the country from which they left in order to save their people." And so they came. 

The young man from Iran sat in the room with the young man from Iraq and cracked jokes, there were two young men from Somalia sitting in a row (one was Tiger Woods' skin tone, the other was Wesley Snipes' skin tone), there were students from Eastern Europe, West Africa, and everywhere in between. And the icing? The teacher was from Romania!

Wow. United Nations eat your heart out!

So maybe I was wrong to assume that Stephenson was off his rocker for thinking the world could come together on one musical chord - I have evidence that they can come together under one blackboard! 

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