Posted by DEAN SKIP RUTHERFORD – I love great Arkansas debates. In the 2007 legislative session, my favorite was how to spell the plural of Arkansas: either Arkansas’ or Arkansas’s. At the Clinton School, we referred to it as the Great Apostrophe Debate. By a non-binding resolution, the legislature chose Arkansas’s. That’s my preference as well.
Now, Arkansas is in a debate over the manner in which Arkansas history will be taught in the K-12 curriculum. Will it be a “unit” as part of a broader subject or as a separate course? The state Education Department favors the “unit” approach while many of Arkansas’s leading historians (including Clinton School Founding Dean and former Governor/Senator David Pryor) advocate the “stand alone” position. Each side is making its case to Governor Beebe, and both have valid points. While I personally favor the “stand alone” course, I’m glad to see Arkansas history being discussed by the Governor, Dean Pryor and others. What I hope in the long term is that more people will write books, articles and produce films about the history of our state.
This spring Dr. Peggy Scranton, a political science professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock (UALR), will once again offer our students her popular elective course on the Clinton Presidency. It only seems like yesterday but it was 16 years ago when Governor Clinton announced his candidacy in 1991. Dr. Scranton’s course will soon qualify as a history elective as well.
One of the great legacies of the 40th anniversary commemoration of the 1957 desegregation of Little Rock Central High School is the number of books and documentaries on the subject that have been produced since. Several members of the Little Rock Nine are among the authors as are Ralph Brodie, 1957-58 Central High student body president, and Dr. Johanna Miller Lewis, the UALR history professor who is higher education’s strongest public history advocate. The Brodie and Lewis books are not yet published.
Though not Little Rock Central related, one Arkansas history book I’m looking forward to seeing is the autobiography of Vada Sheid of Mountain Home. Vada is the first woman in her own right to be elected to both the Arkansas House of Representatives and the Arkansas State Senate. That in itself is noteworthy.
Vada’s son, Richard, asked me to write a forward for the book which I was glad to do. Nothing Personal – Just Politics provides an inside look at campaigning in North Central Arkansas and serving in the Arkansas legislature. It is scheduled for publication late this fall.
Yes, history is worth debating and certainly worth documenting, writing and reading.
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