As families
across our state start the new school year, the Arkansas State Archives is
taking a moment to look back at the history of education in Arkansas. On August
15, the Archives launched its 21st digital collection, “Time for Class – Arkansas Schools through the Years.”
The materials
in this collection have been digitized by archivists at the main archives in
Little Rock, the Northeast Arkansas Regional Archives in Powhatan and the
Southwest Arkansas Regional Archives in Washington.
The purpose
of the collection is to bring awareness to the ongoing history of education in
the state, from its early beginnings to its ever-progressing present. Over the
course of two centuries, the state has migrated from one-room schoolhouses
with teachers instructing multiple grade levels to a standardized and wide-spread
network of school districts spanning the state.
Examples from
the new digital collection include late 19th and early 20th century class portraits,
guidelines for teachers, a school director’s oath of office, court documents alleging misuse of school tax funds, a 19th century
women’s college curriculum, petitions for the creation of new school districts and
appeals against school district consolidation.
This
collection does not embody near the entirety of the Archives’ holdings on the
history of Arkansas’s schools, but showcases examples of the great variety of
education-related materials. However, the digital collection is only in its
beginning stages and will continue to grow as new historical documents and
photographs are added.
Take some time to visit this collection and the other digital collections offered by
the Arkansas State Archives: http://ahc.digital-ar.org/.
