Little Rock
A one-year moratorium on new teaching guidelines set to take effect this fall is being sought by historians upset with what they say will be a watering down of the teaching of Arkansas history in the public schools.
Tom Dillard, president of the Arkansas History Education Coalition, suggested Saturday that the new guidelines for social studies, approved by the state Education Board this year, violate a 1997 state law on teaching Arkansas history and effectively reverse the group's effort of at least the last 20 years to incorporate the subject into school curricula.
"We now face the prospect of Arkansas history being removed from the curriculum in the schools of our state—at least effectively removed, if not completely so," Dillard said at a news conference at the main library in Little Rock.
Last year, the Arkansas Education Department led a committee of educators to study revising the guidelines, as the agency routinely does for the various subjects. The board then approved the guidelines, combining social studies and Arkansas history into one subject for kindergartners through sixth graders and requiring the teaching of world history in seventh and eight grades, typically when Arkansas history is taught. Dillard noted that the 10-year-old state law, adopted he said after the state Education Department failed to follow through on a promise to beef up Arkansas history instruction in the schools, requires that schools teach a unit of Arkansas history as a social studies subject at each elementary grade "with greater emphasis at the fourth and fifth grade levels."
In addition, he said, the schools must teach a full semester of Arkansas history to students between the seventh and 12th grades.
Dillard said the new guidelines could effectively reduce Arkansas history to a mere mention to young students and could eliminate the subject altogether from a high school student's coursework. He said the world history requirement in the new guidelines most likely would bump Arkansas history into the higher grades, where teachers have no textbooks and few materials on the subject and when students can elect to take other social studies courses to graduate.
"We contend that the new social studies frameworks are in violation of Act 787 of 1997 and we believe it's in violation probably in a variety of ways," Dillard said.
Coalition members will meet with state Education Commissioner Ken James on Thursday, when they plan to ask for the moratorium. Also, Dillard said, the group will ask that Gov. Mike Beebe appoint a blue-ribbon panel to study the guidelines and arrive at changes that preserve the teaching of Arkansas history.
Last week, two new textbooks on Arkansas history were published but they are geared for middle school classes. Dillard said the two decades since Arkansas' 150th sesquicentennial have been a building process with the mission to change the poor condition of Arkansas history education in the schools. He, other historians, and teachers stressed the importance of continuing with that progress.
"What this latest action by the Department of Education has done is to cut the legs out from under the people who have spent time, effort and money in creating these materials," said Tom DeBlack, president of the Arkansas Historical Association and professor of Arkansas History at Arkansas Tech University.
DeBlack stressed the importance of teaching children "where they came from."
"We need to give our students a real awareness of who they are, of how they came to be as a people and what their possibilities are in the future as part of the great American scheme," Dillard said.
Dillard and others expressed disappointment with what they said appeared to be an almost secretive process used by the Education Department to arrive at the new guidelines.
But Julie Thompson, a spokeswoman for the Education Department, said in a telephone interview Saturday that the agency went to great lengths to involve historians and educators in making the revisions.
She acknowledged that committee members were asked not to discuss preliminary changes. But the agency used this "security feature," she said, to prevent a problem that occurred in 1992. In that year, preliminary guidelines for math were released and some schools ended up teaching to the wrong guide, she said.
Thompson said the new guidelines on Arkansas history do not violate state law, and they maintain an emphasis on state history at the lower levels. The guidelines for elementary schools provide more detail and, therefore, create a greater likelihood that students will get more instruction in Arkansas history, she said.
Thompson acknowledged that it was "unfortunate" that the textbook review occurred the same year as the standards were revised, and said the agency might have to take a closer look at what materials are available for teaching Arkansas history in the high schools.
