Last night, as I lay in bed awake at about 2 AM, I found myself turning over in my mind the kerfuffle in Florida about the AP African-American history course in Florisa high schools. Before going to bed, I had listened to a long discussion of the subject between Chris Hayes and Ta-Nihisi Coates. Now I should explain that the only high school course in history I ever took was Mr. Wepner’s course on European history, and that was 75 years ago, so I am really not up to speed on high school history courses or AP courses (which apparently means “advanced placement”). But I have the following thoughts, for what they are worth.
Let us suppose that seniors taking an AP American history
course for a semester meet five times a week, 50 minutes each time (is this
correct? I have no idea.) That is roughly 4 hours a week. I am going to assume
that the students all have cell phones and that they spend maybe three hours a
day, seven days a week on them texting, sexting, exploring social media,
tweeting, Lord knows what else. That is, let us say, 20 hours a week, which is five
times as much as what they spend in their AP American history course.
Ron DeSantis does not want them to study African-American
history. But Ron DeSantis has no control over what they find on their phones.
So here is my proposal. A group of distinguished historians of African-American
history should get together and post online a series of little lectures,
discussions, videos, and so forth on aspects of African-American history. Each
of these posts should state clearly that the material contained therein is not
considered appropriate by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for high school seniors to
encounter. Young people should be urged not to watch this material, not to
tweet about it, not to send messages about it to their friends, and certainly
not to mention it in class. Anyone encountering this material accidentally on
his or her phone should be warned that if they live in Florida, the governor
does not want them to know about it.
My guess is that within 72 hours more young people in
America would know about what was in this material than could be accomplished
by a $300 million government grant to the US Department of Education. I mean, does anyone actually believe that
young people these days derive their primary understanding of the world from
what they are told by teachers in high school classrooms? I am 89 years old and
even I know that that is nonsense.
16 comments:
Really great idea.
My daughter took AP History. They used “A People’s History Of The United States,” by Howard Zinn. She loved it. And she loved the teacher.
Here’s what Rick Santorum had to say about the book:
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2015/apr/15/rick-santorum/book-howard-zinn-most-popular-high-school-history-/
The ones who are predisposed towards an anti-racist point of view might listen to it and have their postures confirmed. That's good.
The ones who do not hold an anti-racist point of view and admire DeSantis are not going to listen to it, and a series of alt-right podcasts "refuting" the anti-racist podcasts will undoubtedly appear.
The idea behind a standard high school history curriculum is, I suppose, that everyone learns the same historical facts and the same historical myths and as a result, we have a population with certain shared values and goals.
The era when that was possible is probably over.
P.S.:
My daughter (perhaps unfortunately) is a lot like her father – outspoken and a bit contrarian (perhaps not as contrarian as s. wallerstein). The college application process involves writing a lot of essays. Some colleges require 2-3 essays with each application. My daughter – who took 6 AP classes; was an almost straight A student; was the captain of her high school tennis team; played violin in the high school orchestra; and volunteered for all sorts of charitable causes through our Reform Temple – among the essays she wrote, included an essay comparing the college admission process to The Hunger Games. I tried to dissuade her from submitting that essay, asking her if she thought the best way to be accepted by a college is by criticizing their admission policy. She responded that if they really are interested in promoting independent thought, it won’t bother them, it should actually impress them; and if the essay was a reason they rejected her, she did not want to go there. (She could easily have gotten into U of M, which was only ½ hour away from where we live. She resisted applying there because she thought all the students were snobs and all they cared about was football. Plus she wanted to get away from her parents. She procrastinated applying there until the last possible minute, submitting her application just before midnight on December 31. She only made the waiting list.) Every school she submitted her Hunger Games essay to rejected her – including all the Ivy League schools she applied to. She wound up going to Case Western University in Cleveland, where she got a pretty good education. Plus it was only 4 hours away, which made my wife very happy – we attended every college orchestra concert she played in.
PPS;
I forgot, she also scored in the high 700's in both the verbal and math SATs; and she scored 33 out if 35 on that other college admission test they use. She was still rejected by Brown, Yale and Princeton, as well as U. of Chicago and Washington U. in St. Louis. These kids today have it really rough.
Marc,
Good for your daughter!
I can tell you (and her) from personal experience that being contrarian does not generally win friends and influence people, still less people with power to castigate your contrarian views.
Still, all and all, it's worth it. It's the road less less traveled by and while there's no prize waiting for you at the end, you end up a bit more autonomous, a bit freer, a bit closer to the exit from the cave.
My sincere best to her...
There was a quite illuminating discussion about the AP African American Studies course on PBS NewsHour two nights (I think it was) ago, in which the interviewees were two people at the College Board (which runs the AP program) who were directly involved with the development and revision of the course. One of the points they made was that the revisions occurred before De Santis's objections and were not made in response to those objections. They noted among other things that students are not locked into a required set of secondary readings and can go in different directions in that respect; what the course, like other AP courses in humanities and soc sciences, emphasizes is primary sources of various kinds.
One thing that might well increase the intended audience is to include a warning for each video that the material is for mature audiences, and one of those easy-to-overcome hurdles, a button that you must click on to to verify/assert that you are indeed at least 18 years old.
P.s. As is well known, while there are certain national standards, public school education and curricula in the U.S. are still very much a locally run affair, where states and counties and school boards have a lot of control. That's why "culture wars" issues around education and curricula play out often at the local level. The AP courses can occasionally become, as they have in Fla., a flash point partly because they are developed by a private organization, the College Board, in consultation w teachers and academics. So DeSantis can portray this as an effort to foist "a political agenda" on Fla schools from, so to speak, the outside. Which is ridiculous but plays very well with his base in Fla.
I see that the Economist's (not exactly a far left journal) democracy index for 2022 just appeared and Chile is now rated a full democracy in position number 20 (number 1 is Norway),
while the good old United States of America is considered a flawed democracy and is in position number 30.
"One of the points they made was that the revisions occurred before De Santis's objections and were not made in response to those objections."
Perhaps the CB read the room (AP courses are a nine figure item on CB's balance sheet) after Youngkin's election and then Desantis' reelection, as well as the CRT nonsense and the anti-LGBTQ legislation (race proxy in part).
s.w., I believe Chile has also ranked higher on other indexes for several years.
Perhaps the CB read the room (AP courses are a nine figure item on CB's balance sheet) after Youngkin's election and then Desantis' reelection
From what I cd tell the revisions did not sound, on the whole, that objectionable. Still sounds like a good course. You can find the interview at PBS NewsHour site; I'm too busy rt now to link it.
Sorry that was me, not Anonymous.
aaall,
It's not that Chile is all that great.
It just strikes me as weird that the United States, which more than any other nation I know of, sermonizes and lectures the rest of humanity about democracy and even at times uses the
propagation of democracy as a pretext with which to invade other countries, doesn't rate especially high on the democracy index of the Economist magazine, which, I reiterate, is hardly a far left journal.
Here is the Economist Democracy Index. At the end of the article there is a list of countries in order of rank. You can see the 2022 ratings, those which just came out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index
Love it. Great idea. Should be taken seriously.
When I heard about the AP class being changed, I thought about the high school kids getting college credit on the cheap. My guess is that some (if not many) high school students are taking the class to help fulfill a humanities requirement when they get to college.
It seems to me the better approach would be for college professors to insist the subject matter needs to be taught at the college, not in high school.
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