By THEA RUTHERFORD, Guardian National Correspondent

thea@nasguard.com

When Tia Swann teaches art, her students' minds expand.

For 45 minutes, her art students at Columbus Primary School are not just a group of squirming seven-year-olds, they're aficionados with knowledge of local and foreign artists. They're not just sitting in hard plastic chairs in a stuffy classroom waiting for recess, they're creators with plans and ideas that are as valid as anyone twice their size. They're not just little people who've just learned to read and write, they're the future of art in The Bahamas.

They are children with the opportunity to express their emotions through the blue prints of their imaginations. In this class, they can't be wrong.

"Art allows them the freedom of self expression, so we give them the instruction but at the end of the day we're leaving performing the task up to them," says Swann.

Yet some children never take an art class with an art teacher until the seventh grade when they begin to prepare for the BJC art exam. While art is a subject that most junior high and high school students will encounter at some point at their schools, whether or not children study art in primary school depends on their school's curriculum and the availability of a specialized art teacher.

Pamela Chandler, the art and design officer for the Ministry of Education, says that there are 18 art teachers in government primary schools across New Providence, which has a total of 25 such primary schools. Specialist art teachers are even scarcer throughout the chain of islands, which contain an additional 65 government primary schools. The ministry makes up for the deficit by asking homeroom teachers to introduce art in the classroom.

"We encourage the classroom teachers to do artwork," she says.

Chandler, who meets with primary and secondary private school art teachers once a year, says that all of the Catholic primary schools have art teachers.

In fact, Sue Bennett-Williams says that this was the reason why she sent her son Jason Bennett to Catholic schools even though they were not Catholic.

Bennett-Williams, the COB art lecturer, veteran art teacher and artist, has strong convictions about the importance of teaching art to young children.

"It's very important that children have a good sound basis for art education cause [they're] going to be the future patrons," says Bennett-Williams.

Bennett-Williams, who has been teaching art at her acclaimed after-school art program ASMAC Studios for 14 years, is equally passionate about the teaching method. She is a proponent of the discipline-based approach to art by which students are not only taught the elements of art but are also taught to discuss art, art history and about local and international artists.

"There are quite a few teachers [who use the discipline-based approach] now because of course I've been teaching a lot of art education at COB, so I try to encourage all of my students to please use art history and artists," says Bennett-Williams. "Some of my students are at private schools too and I've encouraged them to use artists has a basis for [their] work."

Bennett-Williams witnessed the power of the approach during a six-week pilot program she conducted at Oakesfield Primary School in 1992, after returning home with a Master's degree in art education. She taught a group of fourth and fifth graders using the works of local artist Antonius Roberts and Vincent van Gogh. Bennett-Williams incorporated lessons that she created for a multicultural art curriculum she developed for her Master's project.

"They were able to, after just a few weeks, start recognizing styles," Bennett-Williams remembers. "And they were able to talk about how the work made them feel – what they liked about it and what they didn't like, and what was good about it. It was their opinion so they felt confident to say things about it because they couldn't be wrong."

Swann, who was trained by Bennett-Williams at COB, as well as at her after-school art program where she was both a student and an assistant, uses the discipline-based approach in her classroom as well.

Forget diving right into cutting and pasting, Swann's students wade into the subject by exploring it first. "How does this painting make you feel? What do you see when you look at this painting? What do you think the artist was trying to say in this painting?" she asks them.

And the children have answers. "Art allows them that leeway, that freedom of expression to draw from their emotions," says Swann, who has been teaching the subject for a little less than a year. "It's universal, it's a nonverbal language so it allows them to take what they're feeling inside and put it on to a page. You're never too young because before you talk, you draw."

Art teachers have come to similar conclusions about the power of the subject to facilitate learning in other subjects. "Children seem to improve in all their subjects," says Bennett-Williams. Her method, which gives students an array of choices in planning and designing their individual pieces, teaches them decision-making skills that they use in other areas of their lives. "I give them the opportunity to make the decisions for themselves, even the little ones from six years old, I give them certain choices that they have to make."

If children make a mistake, Bennett-Williams encourages them to adapt it to their work. "If my hundreds and hundreds of kids who have gone through this program don't learn anything, they do learn 'if you make a mistake, make it part of your design,'" she says, echoing the banner on a wall of her classroom that reads the same thing.

An early art education is also motivation. Senior Culture Officer Patricia Bazard talks too about art as a door to understanding other subjects.

"Some children need to be motivated more than others and that motivation often comes through the arts. [Art] is an open door to learning everything else."

Pamela Chandler concurs, noting that art is used to teach children from as early as preschool.

Chandler, who also says that art education brings enjoyment and builds self esteem, uses her school visits around the country to promote art exhibitions of government and private primary and secondary school work that occur in February and March of each year.

At the same time, Chandler encourages principals of schools without specialized art teachers to appoint a teacher. While the College of The Bahamas does produce art teachers who Chandler welcomes into the system, such teachers come in few numbers.

"We're getting one or two from COB," she says. "They're coming gifted but in fewer numbers than we would like."

Meanwhile, enrollment of art students at the college has steadily increased over the years.

"In the last couple of years we have just gotten larger and larger," says Bennett-Williams. "Usually we would have maybe three, four people come in as art majors per year. One year was good — we had six. But last year we had like 18 come in as art majors. This year we've already got at least 10 in the first day."

Young teachers like Swann say that primary school students want art.

"The days when I can't be the art teacher because I'm either substituting or I have some other engagement, they're sad and they would be like 'Ms. Swann, we didn't have art today, are we going to have art next week? Are we going to make up?"