March 25, 2002

Teacher looks to past to explain war to students through artwork

By Vicki Riddick/Staff
Stuttgart Daily Leader

DEWITT - A DeWitt art teacher has found an interesting way to mix history with art, making her students' learning experience fun and interesting as well as educational.

Southside Elementary School in DeWitt recently received a mini-education grant from the Arkansas Humanities Council which art teacher Mary Carr used to purchase "Powers of Persuasion" poster art from World War II to use in her fourth grade art classes.

Carr said she came up with the idea of using the program after Sept. 11 and wanted to find something on a fourth-grade level that they could do without getting into anything that might be scary to her students.

While surfing the internet, Carr saw a lot of artwork that was used during different wars. This is when she found the "Powers of Persuasion" program.

The program shows students how art was used as a persuasion tool. It also gives the students an opportunity to utilize the internet so they may access a digital classroom program provided by the National Archives and Records Administration. Using new digital image technology, Carr's fourth graders are connected with humanities scholars in the Washington, D.C., area.

Carr began using the program in January and said the students are really enjoying it.

"I have been very pleased," Carr said of the students' reaction to the program. "I've been pleased with their coming up with some creative ideas of their own...At times I felt like I was talking to them, but I wasn't sure that they were absorbing or listening. But, when they started to do some of their artwork, I feel like they heard a lot more that I thought."

So far, Carr said, they have worked on part one of the program where various posters motivate the viewer by instilling patriotism, confidence and a positive outlook. Uncle Sam and the Four Freedoms by Norman Rockwell are the two artworks on which they have focused.

They have also listened to President Roosevelt's speech about the four freedoms. Then, they each made a drawing of their own that depicted one of the four freedoms Roosevelt spoke about.

The next phase of the program will involve e-mailing one of the two humanities scholars in Washington, D.C., to send some of the students' artwork and receive comments about them.

The next phase of the program will involve e-mailing one of the two humanities scholars in Washington, D.C., to send some of the students' artwork and receive comments about them.

Carr said some of the extras she is bringing inside the classroom to help the students get a better understanding include an 83-year-old woman. She will also visit the children in the classroom and talk about women at that time and what it was like to live in that day and time. She will also speak about her experiences as her husband joined the Navy and she went to work in an Arkansas factory producing ammunition.

Students will also listen to music of the 1940s, as well.

"This basically gives children an idea of what it was like to live during wartime, and how they can relate that to the war we are involved in right now, and what messages they can do through their own artwork to persuade or give someone else the idea that they have been thinking about," Carr said. "Of course, it is all related to humanities."

Carr said the program is really being viewed as something special. The entire school has become involved with the program. Even the kindergarten students have become interested, especially in Uncle Sam.