The National Association of Scholars (NAS) and the Civics Alliance happily endorse Arkansas House Bill 1696 (HB 1696)—To Establish The Strengthening Arkansas Education Act; And To Provide A Core Curriculum At State-supported Institutions Of Higher Education. HB 1696, sponsored by Arkansas Representative Mindy McAlindon and Senator Jim Dotson, will transform Arkansas’ public university systems general education requirements into a core curriculum. It also strengthens Arkansas’ existing American History and Government general education requirement by specifying that it will include “Instruction in the essentials of the United States Constitution” and “The study of American institutions and ideals.”
HB 1696 works in the spirit of the Civics Alliance’s model legislation, both the Core Curriculum Act (which reforms general education requirements but preserves a distribution requirement structure) and the General Education Act (which transforms general education requirements into a core curriculum). It is a parallel reform effort that works toward the same end—to restore a rigorous, depoliticized, shared education in America’s public universities.
Throughout American higher education, the activist establishment now uses general education requirements to impose propaganda courses on students. General education requirements such as Diversity or Social Justice propagandize students, divert student tuition and faculty tenure-track lines to fund faculty dedicated to ideological activism, and steer students away from the core knowledge they need. The activist establishment also allows requirements such as Diversity or Social Justice to double-count and satisfy Humanities or Social Science courses. This tactic ensures that the only Humanities and Social Science courses most students take will be courses in radical propaganda.
The activist establishment also has expanded the number of required courses and imposed a large and unnecessary financial burden on students. Policymakers should control the increase in general education requirements to save their constituents from financial hardship.
HB 1696 addresses both these problems. When it passes, Arkansas public universities will be far less susceptible to politicization and students will be spared an unnecessary financial burden.
HB 1696 is far less detailed than either the Core Curriculum Act or the General Education Act. It would delegate much of the details of Arkansas’ new core curriculum to Arkansas’ Division of Higher Education: e.g., “‘Requisite core curriculum’ means the fifteen (15) semester credit hours of introductory survey courses as determined by the Division of Higher Education.” Governor Huckabee has been a champion for education reform, and we are sure that her appointees will work to make sure that HB 1696 fulfills legislative intent. The permanent bureaucracy, of course, requires oversight, or members of the education establishment may work to make sure that the bill has no effect. If HB 1696 passes, Arkansas citizens and policymakers will need to keep an eye on the Division of Higher Education, to make sure all its personnel are supporting the bill properly.
We have proposed the greater detail of the Core Curriculum Act and the General Education Act precisely because it is not easy for citizens and policymakers to keep a permanent eye on education bureaucrats. These two acts also state more explicitly that public universities cannot add courses beyond the state required core, and cannot add “double-counting” requirements that would force students to take, say, a Humanities course that also must satisfy a Diversity requirement. We suggest that Arkansas policymakers who wish to deepen education reform might follow up on HB 1696 in future legislative sessions with legislation informed by one or both of our model bills. But this suggestion does not diminish our support for HB 1696. It has been well crafted by state legislators and we are sure that Governor Huckabee’s administration will make sure that the Division of Higher Education follows legislative intent.
Arkansas HB 1696 establishes the principle that a state university should have a core curriculum. Arkansas will join the state leaders of education reform in America when it passes this bill.
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