233 Roland Legiardi-Laura: The Underground History of Amercian Education
by John Taylor Gatto from archive.org
Roland
Legiardi-Laura
In 1966 1 taught the novel
Moby-Dick film theory, and versification to a thirteen-year- old kid named Roland Legiardi-Laura, at
JHS 44 in Manhattan. Roland was memorable
in many ways, but two I remember best were him reeking of garlic at nine
in the morning, every morning, and
his determination never to work at a "job" but to be a poet. Before
he had even graduated from
college,
both his parents died, leaving him nearly penniless. Forced to become completely
self-supporting, he still remained focused on poetry, and a little over a decade later, while
living on a shoestring, organized a mobile band of poet- terrorists who raced around the state
in a candy-striped truck, delivering poetry spontaneously in bars and on street corners. Shortly
afterwards, while living in a building
without secure stairs or an intact roof, he flew to Nicaragua where poetry is
the national sport and convinced
the government to allow him to make a poetry documentary. When I advanced him $50 out of the 300 grand he
would need, I told him he was nuts.
But somehow he raised the money, made the film, and won nine international film awards. Meanwhile he
had learned to support himself doing carpentry and odd jobs, the oddest of which was to help to
rehabilitate a shambles of a building
near Hell 's Angels headquarters on Manhattan 's Lower East Side and
convert it into a poetry nightclub,
where he would later become the director and an impresario. Who would go to a poetry nightclub? It
turns out a lot of people, and as the Nuyorican Poets Cafe expanded to include Roland's unique creation — a live
reading of original film scripts
using top professional actors — I saw the unfolding of a life that's touched
the lives of thousands of people,
helping foster their talent, not a corporate agenda. Rooted in his local community, full of distinction,
thoroughly "scholarly, "Roland's career as a poet and critically acclaimed filmmaker
simply would not have been possible or even foreseeable to a School-to-Work program.
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