Ukelele lessons for Angolans and Congolese

“Strummers in the city: Ukulele program gives Portland immigrant students head start” (The Forecaster):

PORTLAND [Maine] — Two dozen students filed into a classroom at Portland High School Monday for a ukulele lesson, strumming with determined fingers as part of a program to help them acclimate to the coming school year after emigrating to the city.

The students are housed at the city’s shelter for homeless families and are participating in a five-week-long Portland Public Schools’ summer program designed to give them a head start on school success and connect their families to school and city resources.

The theme this year, its second, is “Summer in the City.”

Most students are from Angola and the Republic of Congo, and communicate through interpreters during their time in the program.

Customers at Tony’s Donuts thought that ukulele skills would be useful: “They’re probably going to be on welfare for their entire lives so they need something to keep busy.”

 

6 thoughts on “Ukelele lessons for Angolans and Congolese

  1. Excellent example of selective quoting to support preconceived ideas. You might have also quoted this: “The program is made possible by a grant from … United Way of Greater Portland”, but then, that would have knocked down your running thesis on this blog (namely, that the nanny state and liberals are, at your expense, supporting hordes of immigrants coming in and ruining this country from the utopian ideal it was when you were born).

  2. To be honest, I like that “utopian ideal” myself and I don’t see anything wrong with it.

    Selective quoting can be great too, depending on who does the selection. Since I keep reading this blog, I am quite happy with their selection bias.

  3. How do people from Angola and the Congo end up in Maine?

    It’s a pet peeve of mine that these articles are never clear about the immigration status off

  4. In the end, it’s all fault of the Portuguese. They’re both responsible for the existence of Angola (it was a former colony, built on the aggregation of multiple tribes) and the introduction of the Ukulele to the USA (more accurately to Hawaii, before it was a US territory).

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