“Learn About” Questions
(informational)
- What are the biggest differences between the 1956-57 school year and the 1957-58 school year at Central High School?
- In what ways was Central High School a good choice for desegregation, and in what ways was it a challenging choice?
- How did the 1957-58 school year change forever the future of Central High School?
“Learn From” Questions
(transformational)
- Has there ever been a time in my life that I had to “pretend” I could see the future to make it through? Did it help?
- How can spending more time “getting prepared to know where the obstacles are” help me to move forward in life in a good way?
- Is perseverance something that comes naturally to me? Why or why not?
Transcript:
Well, I think the perseverance issue, the question of bullying, young people setting goals, trying to achieve what seems outsized activity, all of that gets wrapped up into the Little Rock story. And the ability to look back and make determinations about the future is a quality I think that Little Rock reeks with. That I’m not sure that my mother could see any further down the road, the future, than anybody else but if she couldn’t, she pretended she could. And she had some ideas about what you had to do to get to the next point. I think for students today, a very basic question is, what’s the importance of school? Why should I spend all this time being involved in it? And the story I think that I’ve learned is that, while you can’t predict the future, you certainly can begin to improve on the options if you spend more time getting prepared and not just the material, but getting to know where the obstacles are and how you prepare for them. To me, that’s one of the great things that we got out of Central.
