NOT JUST FOR THE REFRIGERATOR

Art teachers are fighting the perception that what they do is a frill. They're making progress

by Jennifer Davis

Five minutes ago, 6-year-old Kemi Arogundade was running around the playground with her friends. Now she's in Mrs. Kichinko's first-grade art class at Springfield's Dubois Elementary School intently coloring her lemon yellow "Mr. Sunshine."

A student at Springfield's Dubois Elementary School illustrates her own hook in art class.

This "Mr. Sunshine" has purple eyes with inch-long spiky eyelashes, a pert nose and dangling earrings. Kemi cocks her head, selects a blue crayon and fills in the full lips. The colors she has instinctively chosen vibrate against each other, jumping off the page. The dark daggers in the background, Kemi calmly explains, are birds. The black streaks? Rain. At her table, the other children chatter. They share crayons, critiques. But Kemi is immersed in sweeping her arm across the page. For her, it's obvious: This is fun, but it's not play.

Arts educators nationwide are struggling against the perception that Kemi's "Mr. Sunshine" is a frill, nothing more than refrigerator art. They've made great progress. Compared to the '80s with its "back to basics" education movement, this decade is a mini-renaissance for arts in the classroom. There's money, research and interest where there was none just a few years ago.

Dubois students get instruction from a visiting artist on how to make hooks.

The change is due in large part to a 1990 wake-up call that rallied art communities across the country. That year, then-President George Bush and the nation's governors announced national educational goals, including a core curriculum to be stressed through the year 2000. The arts were absent. The message couldn't have been more clear. Arts educators issued an equally clear response. Shortly after the arts were overlooked, then-U.S. Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander was speaking in his home state of Tennessee. A school choir was scheduled to perform, but the curtains parted to reveal an empty stage. That embarrassing and deafeningly quiet moment struck home. The arts are now included in our national goals as essential subjects, along with English, math, science, foreign languages, civics and government, economics, history and geography.

Still, the momentum from that grass-roots effort hinges on what happens in the near future. Earlier this year, a national sampling of eighth

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grade students were tested in the arts for the first time in two decades. Preliminary results could be available soon. Final results are expected next spring. In Illinois, a statewide sampling of fourth-, seventh- and 11th- graders were tested in the arts last spring to get a baseline. A new, improved test will examine another sampling of students next spring.

Testing the arts, even on a small scale, is a huge victory for arts education. "It's sad, but true. What gets tested, gets taught," says Doug Herbert, director of arts education for the National Endowment for the Arts. Ironically, say some, arts education may benefit more if our children do poorly. Herbert recalls the American public's shame when testing showed our students didn't know basic geography. Increased attention resulted. So, conversely, good test scores could mean the arts will have to fight harder to prove their worth.

A side walk artist

It's a local battle. President Bill Clinton can praise the value of a well- rounded education that includes the arts. U.S. Secretary of Education Richard Riley can say it's "at the heart of education reform in the 1990s." Art educators can say the arts teach creativity, problem solving and teamwork. But if local school boards don't agree, that means nothing. Herbert notes another motto in education that many superintendents hold dear: "In God we trust. Everybody else better bring their data."

Artist Charles Houska helps students with a painting. Six of the student paintings now grace the walls at Springfield's Dubois Elementary School.

The arts — dance, music, theater, drawing and painting — are not geared toward quantitative documentation. And, until recently, such research didn't exist. "Proof that the arts are important started to emerge in the late '70s and '80s," says Nadine Saitlin, executive director of the Illinois Alliance for Arts Education. "Prior to that, the arts were really targeted as being a frill. In the '80s, anything that didn't smack of the three R's was considered irrelevant to schooling." Cam Davenport, fine arts coordinator for Springfield's District 186, remembers that time. When he taught art at Springfield's Lanphier High School in the '70s, there were four fulltime art teachers. Then came the '80s when there wasn't even one full-time art instructor at the school. Today, there is one full-time and one parttime instructor.

"Fifteen, 20 years ago, Springfield used to have a string program," marvels Davenport. "It was an amazing opportunity for kids who might not otherwise have had that exposure. The district even provided the instruments. I came across them in an old middle school shower room that's now used as a storage area. I saw these beautiful violins and cellos propped up against these shower walls and heard this drip, drip, drip. It was eerie and sad."

He pauses. "We still own a number of them. I keep them, thinking someday we'll pull them out, fix them up and use them." A longer pause. "That may not be in my lifetime."

He sounds tired. Still, Davenport does what he can. "I always tell new art teachers, 'If you're not up to a constant struggle, don't come here.' It's not enough to have knowledge about how to teach the arts. You have to be a strong advocate. I also tell them, 'We can fight all day with administrators and boards of education and not grow an inch. Our best route is to be proactive and engage the community — parents first.'"

Two months ago, Davenport and about two dozen other representatives of Springfield arts organizations tried to rouse community interest with a first-ever arts education roundtable. They sat in the Masonic Temple basement, surrounded by propped-up art

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posters and pamphlet-laden card tables and brainstormed with the audience, a good-sized group of parents, teachers and students. Mrs. Kichinko, Kemi's teacher, was there. The first obstacle mentioned? Money. Mainly, the lack of it.

Schools don't have many options when it comes to funding the arts. They can allocate dollars in their base budgets or apply for arts grants from the Illinois Arts Council, a statewide agency with a $14.1 million budget to promote Illinois art. This year, the council has about $650,000 to spend on arts education statewide. The Illinois State Board of Education also gives grants, but only to K-6 programs. This fiscal year $499,700 is available. About $1.5 million was requested. Still, it's a start. "For a number of years, the state encouraged schools to develop an arts curriculum," says Merv Brennan of the state board. But only in the last decade has the board backed that encouragement with cash.

The students at Springfield's Duhois school learned first how to make the paper for their hooks.

There are no federal funds earmarked for arts education per se by the U.S. Department of Education, but new Goals 2000 money — a significant chunk at $410 million this past fiscal year — could help fulfill arts-related goals. Schools have great flexibility with that cash, says Sarah Howe of the federal education department. The only hitch? Unlike other federal education money, which is automatically distributed under a formula, states have to apply for those funds. Illinois got $16.6 million in Goals 2000 money last fiscal year. But, because schools could use those dollars to address a variety of needs, only the Tazewell Regional School District specified an amount for arts education: $28,225. Three other districts planned to use some of their grant dollars for fine arts, but amounts weren't specified.

Then the students were allowed to give their imaginations free rein in writing and illustrating their books. The students were guided by artist Nancy Vachon.

But money isn't everything. "If a community wants arts education," says Joanne Vena, director of the arts in education program at the Illinois Arts Council, "they'll have it, regardless of the dollars." The arts are a priority for Cliff Hathaway, principal of Dubois, Kemi's school. But Dubois is not wealthy. Hathaway's office is a cubicle pushed back into a corner — no real walls or door. The school's 100-year- old halls are beautiful. They're filled with plants and children's drawings, with painted popular cartoon characters and photos of students dancing. Hathaway went to school here. "My first memory," he recalls, "is of my mother walking me to kindergarten, and my teacher was there playing the piano."

In addition to Martha Kichinko, Dubois' full-time art teacher, this grade school continually brings in guest artists. Two years ago, Charles Houska helped the students paint six large pieces that now grace the walls. He himself painted a striking 50-foot black-and-white mural that curves across the school's library. And, earlier this year, Nancy Vachon taught the kids how to make paper, which they then turned into books they wrote and decorated. Fourth-grader Sarah Spilker has fingerpainted the cover of hers in purple and burnt orange. A blue feather and some sequins peek out from the inside, which is filled with poems.

For the past several years, Dubois has used grant money to pay for those guest artists. This year, for the first

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time, the school's parent-teacher organization is picking up the $4,000-plus tab.

The books the children made are a good example of using the arts to teach other subjects. That's something Dubois strives to do on a daily basis. On Hawaii Day, the fourth-graders pretend to fly to that Pacific island, and, once there, they learn to dance the hula and make flower necklaces, or"leis."

"They learn the culture, and it's fun," says Mrs. Kichinko, who has taught 30 years' worth of art students. Until the Industrial Revolution, the arts were integrated into every subject, says Herbert of the NEA. "Before the turn of the century, learning was a seamless whole," he explains. "It was when we started putting people on assembly lines that we developed a penchant for compartmentalizing our curriculum. Really, there is an affinity between the scientist and the artist. Einstein knew that." Arts educators are now starting to prove that link in a way that parents can appreciate: research. Musical instruction has been linked to higher SAT scores, and related research continues to surface. In February, another such study said musical instruction results in increased spatial reasoning. Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas gave opening remarks when the study's authors visited Chicago two months later. He said then that the arts "will not be sacrificed on the altar of high academic standards or on the altar of other core curriculum subject areas."

Whirlwind drama artist Little Tom Jackson gives a student at Waters Elementary School some personal attention.

In October, Whirlwind, a Chicago-based group that uses drama to teach the language arts, released a study showing its students scored significantly higher in reading and reading comprehension than other students who are not in the program.

Karl Androes, the program's executive director, spent almost 15 years taking his music, drama and dance company into schools. Then his son, a third-grader, helped him see that the arts could be used as a teaching tool.

Jackson leads stretches with students at Pulaski Community Academy to warm up their bodies and imaginations.

"My son did really well in math in second grade when there wasn't a lot of reading attached to it. But in third grade, suddenly everything — math, science — involved reading. More and more of his math was story problems, which messed him up. Pretty soon he felt like there was nothing he was good at. It dawned on me that if our children can't read, it doesn't matter if they can dance. They need to get through school to succeed in life. Before, when we went into schools, everybody had a good time and we all went home. Now we're helping these kids improve their basic skills." Androes has discovered that kids understand and remember stories better when they act them out with his drama troupe.

Indeed, fairly recent revolutionary thinking in education shows that students learn differently. Some absorb information visually; others kinesthetically. As artist Georgia O'Keeffe once said, "I found that I could say things with color and shapes that I had no words for." The evolution in the way we approach and value arts education has been slow, but it has steadily gained steam in the past decade.

For now, arts educators are holding their collective breath, waiting for those national test scores. Good or bad, Kemi will still learn about the arts as long as she's at Dubois. Her school thinks it's important. Other schools, however, might not, especially if testing doesn't continue.

"We're preparing for either outcome," says Herbert. "We'll be ready to defend ourselves." 

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