Rift Over Soviet Arts Festival Sparks Cold War Among County Educators

A philosophical clash over how best to prepare students for the Soviet arts festival--a clash deepened by personal friction between two educators--has resulted in competing “official” curriculum guides for San Diego County teachers as part of the ballyhooed event beginning in mid-October.

The county Office of Education, which helps plan curriculum for area school districts, has issued the 109-page Soviet Arts Curriculum Guide, which its fine-arts administrator calls the “official” pamphlet because her office has responsibility for such education countywide.

But the chairwoman of the education committee of the city-sponsored “San Diego Arts Festival: Treasures of the Soviet Union” group planning the exhibitions says her two guides are the “official” documents because they have the imprimatur of the mayor and the City Council.

Although some people caught in the middle of the spat say teachers won’t find the guides all that different in substance, the main editors of each firmly defend their own approaches as the correct way of tying schools to the festival.

‘It’s an Ugly Dispute’

“It’s an ugly dispute,” lamented Ann Heidt, the education office’s arts coordinator. Nevertheless, she defended her work as “best” because it attempts to teach art from Soviet cultures, using general concepts taught by teachers in math, literature, art and history, and to emphasize multicultural ties.

Jessie Flemion, a history professor at San Diego State University and chairwoman of the city’s festival education committee, retorted: “All I can tell you is that the materials the county produced were too narrowly focused and she (Heidt) wouldn’t change, so (the city committee) went ahead to implement our concept of having a balanced presentation in literature and social sciences as well as arts.”

“Hopefully, teachers and students will get the enrichment intended no matter which one is used,” said Kay Wagner, arts coordinator for San Diego city schools.

Wagner said her office “is caught in the middle,” even though her staff produced much of the material for both guides.

At this point, the two sides are even holding separate workshops to promote their guides to teachers who want to prepare their students for the festival.

Heidt held daylong seminars Saturday for about 100 teachers as her first effort to disseminate the guide, one for each school throughout most of the county. But Flemion, who expressed no interest in attending the county session, said the “official workshop” will be offered next Saturday by her group and will include Mayor Maureen O’Connor. Armed with funds from various philanthropies, including $100,000 through the Ronald McDonald Children’s Charities, Flemion plans to give a copy of her guides to each of the county’s 14,000 teachers.

The flap has its origins in events almost nine months ago, when Flemion’s committee began planning a specialized curriculum for the county’s 350,000 students in kindergarten through 12th grade, using the funds donated to it for education-related purposes.

The committee opted to tap the resources of Wagner’s office at the San Diego Unified School District. Wagner, a member of Flemion’s committee, made available one, and then a second, resource teacher to help develop materials, which include the guides as well as books, maps and videotapes.

“There was a real demand on the time of my people,” said Wagner, whose small staff must also cope with an increased workload this year given the expanded “Arts in Education” program, which this year places an artist in every one of the city’s 109 elementary schools.

In the meantime, Heidt--a bit miffed that she had not been asked to serve on the festival education committee--began writing her own curriculum, using contributions and research from many art and cultural experts.

Decided to Merge the Efforts

In late spring, Wagner decided that the best results would come from merging the efforts, and she arranged for Heidt to sit down with the city curriculum specialists to produce a single guide. Flemion was in the Soviet Union at the time, obtaining materials for 20 “treasure chests,” traveling collections of Soviet arts and crafts that will move from school to school.

But, when Flemion returned and saw the guide results, she objected.

“I saw that the materials were presenting only one area, the arts, and did not include literature and social sciences,” Flemion said. So she rewrote parts of the guide to reflect her own concepts and to focus more closely on the festival itself. In addition, she wanted two guides--one for elementary students and one for secondary students--to make it easier for teachers to apply the materials.

“I think it was a shock to me that the city wanted to spend more money and write something separate,” Heidt said. “Our guide does focus on arts, but this is an arts festival, not a social sciences festival . . . but we use the arts to go into all other curriculum areas and to show that Soviet arts can be used to teach about our area’s own ethnic and cultural diversity.

“Their concept has nothing about (state) curriculum frameworks and nothing about multicultural approaches.”

Wagner, of the city schools district, said the competing guides actually will have many similarities because her staff did much of the writing for both. Flemion conceded that “some of their things are incorporated into ours and some of ours into theirs.”

‘Dispute Just Wasn’t Resolvable’

Heidt is upset that Flemion borrowed some of the county material by promising it would not be copyrighted but that the festival committee now plans to copyright its guides. Flemion said the guides are being copyrighted, but Wagner said she doubts a copyright has any meaning because so many people contributed material to the guides and have not been asked permission to grant copyrights.

“I feel like I’m caught in the middle of a dispute that just wasn’t resolvable,” said Wagner, adding that she doesn’t care what guide her teachers use as long as they find the materials useful and enriching for their students.

“The way I see it, these are enrichment guides, not guides to teach curriculum per se in art or social science or anything else, and therefore, as long as they put the arts festival into context from a cultural and artistic perspective, that’s fine.

“But both feel very strongly about what they have done. . . . I work with Ann on a regular basis, but I also know Jessie as a member of the arts commission, and I am grateful to the mayor for having 1989 as the ‘Year of the Child.’

“Just let me say that the way things have been done would not be my style.”