PUTTING ART BACK IN EDUCATION

EAST PRAIRIE -- Last year, an East Prairie third-grade class learned to add, subtract and divide with dancing numbers.

Artist-in-residence Randy Barron of the City in Motion Dance Theatre also had a sixth-grade class interpreting literature through dance, and a middle-school class of behaviorally disordered students expressing their wild side as jungle animals.

According to an educational theory known as Multiple Intelligences, students are smart in different ways. Some thrive with the pencil-and-paper approach, but other students are more aurally oriented. And some respond better to kinesthetic techniques, such as movement and dance.

"In fact, that's the main way kids learn," says Robert W. Carlson, program director of the Arts as a Basic Program.

Initiated in 1986 through a partnership between the Missouri Arts Council and the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, Arts as a Basic Program is an attempt to establish arts education in the core curriculum and to create a commitment in the community to arts education.

Arts as a Basic Program evolved as a response to reductions in arts funding within school districts over the last decade or so.

"So many people feel it's a frill and a fun thing to do," Carlson says. "Not like math."

But Carlson and others contend the opposite is true.

"Research shows the arts may be more important than other areas (of study)," he said. "They have the ability to touch all areas."

The East Prairie School District is one of 21 across the state participating in the program so far and one of the six original sites. The East Prairie system consists of three elementary schools, a middle school and a high school.

"East Prairie is a little Southern town so remote from the big city and culture of any kind I hesitated with this dance residency," said Rosalie LaPlant, the school librarian who coordinates the program. "But the kids just loved it."

Last year's dancer was in residence for a month. The year before, a ceramic artist guided three classes of students in the creation of a tile mural depicting the history of the area. The mural now adorns a city park.

"It's brought an arts awareness not only to the schools but to the community," LaPlant said.

The program led to the formation of the East Prairie Committee for the Arts, a community group which now helps foot the bill for bringing artists and other performers to the community.

Arts as a Basic Program provides money to help with each step toward shaping a long-range plan that establishes the arts as a part of basic education. Developing funding from the community is part of the planning phase.

"The whole idea is for us to become more independent each year," LaPlant said.

On Monday, the Chameleon Puppet Theatre from Columbia performed for the schools, and on Dec. 2 the Imaginary Theatre from St. Louis will present Hans Christian Anderson's "The Little Fir Tree."

Some performers, like the Mid-America Dance Company and the River City Ramblers, a Dixieland group, give shows for the community.

Carlson, who taught instrumental music for 15 years before becoming an arts administrator, can cite research showing that SAT scores increase and attendance improves among both students and teachers when the arts are integrated into everyday classwork rather than pursued in isolation.

"Teachers find it enhances what they do," he said. "It makes their job easier."

Training teachers how to incorporate the arts into their classrooms is an important part of the program. At East Prairie, 25 teachers have taken an arts integration course taught by Southeast Missouri State University.

"We now have a K-12 curriculum in place for visual arts and for music," LaPlant said. "Later we will come up with one for creative writing."

But each teacher still decides whether or not to use the curriculum. "We encourage them and make them aware of what's being offered," LaPlant said.

Other subjects aren't de-emphasized as a result, she said. "It isn't that arts take the place of anything else. It's just to enhance learning."

Carlson argues for education that covets the arts not only for the creativity they unleash in students but as an academic pursuit "where there is real study and analysis and reflection."

"No matter what you do, the arts are a major part of our everyday lives," he says. "It's the clothes we wear, the cars we drive, the houses we live in, the music we listen to. We just take it for granted."

An application for Arts as a Basic Program can be obtained by writing to the Missouri Alliance for Arts Education, 1750 S. Brentwood Blvd., Suite 501, St. Louis, Mo. 63144 or by calling (314) 962-1880. Applications must be postmarked no later than Jan. 31, 1995.