Why the Arkansas Studies Curriculum was created

Decisions, decisions.  We make them every day.  Both individually and collectively.  Some are trivial, some are critical, but all the decisions we make collectively have important impacts on all of us, and maybe some other folks as well.

That’s why we usually try to make our important decisions as carefully as possible.  We, and sometimes our children and children’s children, have to live with the consequences of these decisions.  That’s what the present commotion about the current Arkansas History Frameworks issued by the Department of Education is all about.

Consider this.  How often do most of us, when facing a pressing decision, look back at decisions we have made in the past?  Most often we find that this helps us to put our present decisions in a better context.  We, as individuals, and as Arkansans, are, in a very real sense, what we are because of consequences stemming directly or indirectly from decisions Arkansans of earlier generations have made.  The past isn’t dead and gone.  The past is, in fact, always with us.  So, it’s really important that we understand our past, not as something we wish it was or wasn’t, but for what it truly was.  And, sometimes, it truly was many different things at once.  That’s why the study of Arkansas History is vital.  That’s why it’s critical that we who are making decisions currently understand something about the decisions of the past and why it’s doubly important that our children and grandchildren who will have to grapple with the consequences of our current decisions understand how these decisions were made, what shaped and influenced the context within which the decisions were made, and what their consequences were.  It’s a never ending process.  The past is, in fact, always with us.

It is the goal of the Arkansas Studies Curriculum that when Arkansas students walk across the stage to receive their high school diplomas, they have a fundamentally-sound, basic, detailed understanding of the decisions that have shaped the Arkansas they are preparing to lead in the future.  This was the clear intent of the legislation known as Act 787 of 1997.  To achieve this goal it is not sufficient simply to offer a semester course of Arkansas History at the secondary level.  If students are to get the most out of such a course they need to enter it with a solidly grounded and reasonably detailed acquaintance with Arkansas’s geography, its governmental structure, its economic history, its place in the context of world and national affairs, and the major individuals and events that have shaped the nature of our state till now.  It was this realization that led to the stipulation in Acts of Arkansas 787 that each elementary grade level include a Unit of Arkansas History within its educational program.  This is the instructional path taken in science, mathematics, and language arts.  There is no sufficient reason for not following this practice when it comes to something as important to our lives and well-being as Arkansas History.

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