This summer I am teaching gifted and talented 9th graders of New Haven. The program, called Ulysses S. Grant for reasons that no one quite seems to know, is an established one, started in the 50s when Yale students thought to take academically promising African-American boys of New Haven and to teach them the classics, so as to increase their chances of succeeding. And I think that this original mission – bringing the benefits of liberal education to those who deserve it, who want it, who might succeed with it but who, at present, do not have it – is an important one.

After all, if we believe in the power of liberal arts, the necessity of real education, that a responsible classroom benefits the students in it and their society in a multitude of ways, then everyone needs that education. If not everyone can be so educated at first, then surely the talented and motivated students will gain the most from a partial program. And the students of Yale, are in the best position to work at this program.

Yale students ought to teach New Haven’s promising students. For it to work, parents must be informed of their students’ responsibilities. For them to be informed, they must make it to a meeting. For them to make it to a meeting, especially when the filming of the next Indiana Jones movie has taken over Yale’s campus, they need to be directed by green balloons.

So I realized that, for one hour at least, my doing good was not diving out of airplanes or staging a sit-in or giving a speech or even raising a child. It was walking down Chapel street with a green balloon.