How do you express yourself within the rules of your school? The expectations of your friends or family?

Students in places ranging from a small town in Kansas to Los Angeles soon could learn lessons like these, from studying Lancaster County Amish quilts.

Six quilts from the Heritage Center of Lancaster County are included in a group of 40 "national treasures" that will be used to teach kids about American art.

The quilts are in heady company.

Other treasures include a silver teapot made by Paul Revere, Gilbert Stuart's well-known George Washington portrait, a flamingo painting by John James Audubon, photographs of both Abraham Lincoln and the Selma-to-Montgomery civil rights march, a Tiffany stained-glass window, a Norman Rockwell painting called "Freedom of Speech," the Chrysler Building, an Edward Hopper painting called "House by the Railroad" and Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater.

All of them are included in "Picturing America," a National Endowment for the Humanities art education program. The program will include photographs of the treasures and free teaching materials for schools and public libraries.

The Heritage Center learned last fall that its quilts had been selected by the program.

President Peter Seibert was thrilled.

"It was very cool," said Seibert, who found himself in the White House Tuesday, along with cabinet members, Supreme Court Judge Antonin Scalia, writer Tom Wolfe and others listening to President and Mrs. Bush launch the program.

Though Seibert was initially surprised when he heard about the program, he said the choice to include the quilts was a wise one.

"Amish quilts are uniquely American," he said.

And he is tickled that the NEH thought so much of the local quilts that they make up 10 percent of the total treasure collection. The collection also includes a quilt from the South and one from the Midwest.

The six local quilts are part of the rotating display at Heritage Center's Quilt and Textile Museum on Market Street.

So what lessons can Amish quilts teach modern students?

"This is about individual expression in a communal society," Seibert said, "a lesson everyone faces at some level."

Teachers could discuss how artists manage to express themselves within the confines of their own community or society, and how that affects their work. Kids can relate to the idea of trying to find their place somewhere, he said.

The program's workbook includes a description of the Amish quilts as well as a brief history of the Amish and information about their lifestyle and community.

Materials already have been sent out to more than 1,500 pilot schools and libraries, including about 60 in Pennsylvania. No local schools are in the pilot program.

Other schools can apply for the materials through April 15 and receive materials for the 2008-09 school year.

Any public, private, charter or home school consortium or public library may receive the materials, which include lesson plans and 40 large color photographs of the treasures, some arranged in groups.

More information is available on the Web site picturingamerica.neh.gov.

CONTACT US: cstauffer@LNPnews.com or 481-6024