Right, generating revenue, as opposed to delivering a better actual product not subject to the objections of a governor whose motives and POV are crystal clear.
I’ll bow out from there, thanks. Happy to cede the final word.
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7 states ban CRT in K12 publics. Another 16 have bans in progress. I cant blame CB, or anyone, for changing a course which can’t be used in half the country. If others want to develop their own course, do so.
I can’t blame CB for adjusting the curriculum so that it would be acceptable to a wider range of states and political contexts, as long as the curriculum is still useful. Isn’t it a positive step to have an AP African American Studies course in the first place? Some students will take it just because it is an AP course and it may open some eyes. If changing the curriculum means students in FL will get to take the course, couldn’t that be a positive thing for those students?
There is nothing stopping a HS teacher from adding more content to an AP course. They certainly do that at my son’s HS. The teachers all complain about how the AP curriculum isn’t rigorous enough or includes the wrong stuff, so they add more content that they think the kids should actually learn. My son had an amazing APUSH teacher who did so much extra work with the kids that wasn’t on the test, but made him really think, and got him excited about history. Teachers can do the same with this course.
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It isnt just students in Florida. Students In NH and RI, states which ban CRT, can take the course too now. The more the better
In other words, can’t teach people what CRT actually is (without necessarily endorsing it), so it can be continued to be used as bogeyman political slogan?
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This is far, far from my area of knowledge, but I suspect the reworked curriculum is still useful. However, it is possible that leaving out things of critical importance even while still including lots of other useful and beneficial information can lead the students with an incomplete understanding of a topic but a false sense of completeness.
I have no idea if that’s the case with this particular course, but I can think of instances where teaching 90% of a subject and leaving out 10% could be more harmful than just not teaching the course at all.
My main issue with this is, from my perspective the debate over “CRT” is hysteria induced and a form of government censorship over a term that is not well understood for reasons of provoking the culture war for political benefit.
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Even as a teenager, I always suspected that the reason we never seemed to get past WWII in our curriculum was due to the politics of presenting more current history. Black people suffered very overt discrimination during my own lifetime … when I was young, separate facilities, separate education, blockbusting, etc were reality. People were trying to ban books that told of the black experience (and I can state with authority that it wasn’t just the swearing, violence and drugs in them, because I could freely check out equally questionable books that didn’t deal with the black experience). I figured that people who didn’t want to deal with it thought it was easier to leave it out. I don’t think people have changed in the last 50 years.
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When it comes to something like the new AP African American Studies class that the College Board has come out with, any ethnic studies class is, honestly, something that I’d PREFER for my kids to take at a college. Wider range of subject matter to explore in each ___ Studies list of classes.
But isn’t that the point of an AP course? For students who are ready for college level courses, but not required for those who aren’t ready for it?
I think the AP US History course now goes to the year 2000 or so. 1980-present is 5% of the course
I don’t really care if others take AP African American Studies. I’m saying that I’d prefer MY kids to take a ___ studies class in college, instead of high school. Our high school doesn’t even have this class on the radar and it’s a top-ranked public HS.
If people don’t want their kids to take it…then don’t take it. If you do want them to take it in HS, then go for it! For awhile, though, not a whole lot of HSs are going to even offer the class. Some high schools barely have ANY AP classes, let alone something specific like AP African American Studies.
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I think I might be missing something because I don’t think anyone is saying anyone’s kids should be required to take any AP courses in high school.
I think the debate is over what should be in this particular course, how does that get decided (by academics or government fiat or some discussion between the parties), and so on.
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My kids told me that in high school, in the language and literature classes, you got poor grades unless you wrote answers that agreed with the ideological persuasions of the teacher. And the kids knew what to write to keep the teacher happy. At that point the course becomes a travesty. Unconscious bias on the part of the teacher. I don’t suppose college is any better. My son dropped out of college courses (because here is a choice as opposed to high school) when he thought the Prof was approaching the material through significant bias.
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I would say that’s true of lots of courses covered by AP? Literature, history, government, etc., many of these subject areas would benefit from the higher level of sophistication as taught at a good college, and also the higher level of maturity (you would hope…?) of the college students taking the course.
My kid didn’t take AP Lang / Lit (didn’t fit in his schedule with the STEM APs he took), so he will have to take some English / humanities classes in college that many kids pass out of, and I’m actually glad of that. I feel it will benefit him to take them in college.
Extreme begets extreme begets extreme. As higher education has swung astronomically one way, expect there to be a equally extreme push from the other side. Silly to have thought you could make higher education a place of ideology and not expect this reaction.
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I’m of the opinion that this is all just an attempt by the College Board to improve their profits by offering this additional AP class.
Whether or not the College Board sees a return on investment of their efforts will be dependent on whether or not colleges will recognize a 3, 4, or 5 on the AP African American Studies class as getting you college credit at that specific university.
…because not every school gives you actual credit for an AP score on every AP exam. The devil’s in the details.
Back in the stone age when I was in college, the UC system was just starting their ethnic studies general ed requirements. I ended up taking a History of Jazz class through the Black Studies department (it wasn’t called African American Studies yet). I didn’t HAVE to take THAT class…there were several options to choose from, but I chose one that sounded interesting. The class was great. Had to read Malcolm X’s biography while also learning about jazz of the 1920s and 1930s and all that.
Husband took an Asian American Studies class in college. He really enjoyed it.
Nowadays, there’s all sorts of options…like ___ Studies classes that cover stuff like African Americans’ history during different periods of US history, African American history in film, etc., etc.
My YDD, for example, is a huge war history buff, so she’d probably prefer to choose a class that covers a particular ethnic group during the Civil War, WWI, or WWII, for example, whereas my ODD would probably be interested in a film studies class or a class that talked about something like the achievements of people of ___ group in science or whatever.
I don’t really see what the big deal is. It’s another AP class option. People can take it if they want to. Or not. It’ll all work out in the long run.
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I don’t disagree with this, except I think the discussion here isn’t whether people should take this particular class or not, but rather how should that class be created, and shaped, and to what degree should the government dictate the class.
I do think it’s perfectly within a state’s power and responsibility to set standards for its schools, so for me the question is, is the decision to change the curriculum useful to students and society as a whole or not, or is it detrimental?
Of course, then there is the question of what should be offered to high school students ready for advanced course work, as well as college frosh who have completed more advanced course work in high school. AP was apparently originally to offer a standardized way of offering advanced placement in some subjects (the most obvious application is math; foreign languages are also obvious applications, though many colleges still maintain their own placement testing for foreign languages), although the proliferation of AP exams less likely to be accepted for advanced placement by colleges has diluted that purpose.
Skipping to the next level of the subject doesn’t bother me, as the student is presumably just going to move to a higher level of sophistication. Maybe I feel differently about AP course credit being used to eliminate gen ed requirements entirely, so that a student never needs to take an actual college course in that area.
It’s hard for people to understand problems that span generations and centuries. There are many that just want their kids to learn “the past” (there was slavery, now it’s over) and call it a day. Or they think a standard American history course somehow has the bandwidth to give issues like lynchings, redlining, segregation, the Klan, and a dozen other things enough context and connection to lead a teenager to understand why People. Are. Still. Dying. For DeSantis to watch the news this past week and still think “here’s a good idea, let’s oppose this AP course” is just … something. So as much as I agree with criticism of the College Board vis-a-vis making money off of testing and APs, in this case I think their actions (offering the new course) are in the right spirit for the moment we are in.
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