<p>While taking this years AP exam, I realized that a good portion of the test dealt with either historical minorities, or with women rights activists. I am not saying this is wrong, these people changed America positively, but it seems that other important American history topics are bypassed in order to meet the pre-determined "quota" of the above-mentioned questions. It would also seem that having the test deal extensively with such issues would give minority test takers an advantage, for they are more likely to have had studied and read extensively about these people. I would just like to hear anybody elses opinion on this subject.</p>
<p>First off, I didn't realize that some form of quota had to be met. However, yes we were all surprised that for the second year in a row that the DBQ was based on women's rights or women related topics. Other than that, there was really not an overwhelming amount of information on minorities, I think rather, that since history teachers don't focus on this topic that once it appears on the test that the students are surprised by the questions when really this is a defense mechanism since they realized that they not been taught extensively on the subject so they contest that there was an excessive amount of minority-subject based questions when really it was only a handful but since they didn't know the information it seemed like forever. Also, I reviewed the other essay questions, and the topic of minority rights and related information was only a piece of some of the essays [one referred to race relations during Reconstruction and the other talked about Civil Rights Activists of the 1950s] And on top of it you are not required to discuss these topics since (a) you aren't even required to answer either of these essays and (b) you only have to discuss two of the three subjects listed on any one essay. On top of it, I'm really confused on how being a minority would give any advantage, surely blacks, hispanics, etc would want to be educated on their culture but specifically their hardships, and even if so how much of an advantage are they getting. And are you going to even suggest that the large minority, that of women are given advantage just because they are women and thus would be more educated on women hardships and such because then we come to discuss a majority of testakers and plus what is stopping white males from reading up on history, just a thought.</p>
<p>If you go to college boards description of the test, of the 12 major "themes" for the test, 4 directly go for the minority/women's rights issue, and another 2 or three could fit into that category.
And about the advantage for minorities, a lot of doing well on the test is the amount of exposure towards a topic that a test taker has recieved. I think it is much more likely for African American to be exposed much more to the ideas of Marcus Garvey than a White American, or an Indian American. About women, you are probably right but there still is a decent percentage of female students who are obsesesed with the women's rights issue and know it by heart. I think it would be hard to find as many men who were as extensively educated.</p>
<p>Out of curiosity, what historical subjects would you (the OP) deem more important than learning about women's/minorities' struggles in history? I'm not trying to be sarcastic; I just felt that my APUSH class did a pretty decent job of going over all of US history, not just women's/minorities' rights.</p>
<p>Also, if you want to learn about, say, women's rights, just read about it yourself. Those women who know a lot about women's rights had to have gotten their exposure to those ideas from somewhere. The point of taking APUSH is to learn about parts of history that you didn't know about, anyway.</p>
<p>I am just saying that those issues are highlighted to much in the AP test which is leaving out other issues that might have had a larger effect on American history. It is a good thing to gain a little knoledge about a lot of areas in US history, as the AP curriculum does, but it is another to try to emphasize an apolegtic view of history as the AP's heavy reliance on minority/women questions does.
And, in terms of "quotas", collegeboard does divide the multiple choice section up inot percentages. On both the AP practice tests, that I took, and on the AP test itself, a question on Marcus Garvey appeared. While this does make the teast easier to study for, it also shows that the collegeboard feels a need to include a question about him, thus placing an emphasis on minority issues, for the practice tests took questions from old AP tests.</p>