This is not usually a topic of mine, but I generally like Ilya Shapiro, who applauds the changes. I extract the same sections that Ann Althouse did.
"... Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wouldn’t have objected and the proposal wouldn’t have become national news. But the College Board, which designs and administers AP classes and exams, felt the need to wave a red flag by including such 'topics' as intersectionality, queer studies and Black Lives Matter in what should have ostensibly been a high-concept history class.... [I]f you’re... going to have an AP African American Studies course, what would you put in it? Probably what can now be found in the revised framework, with units on (1) early African societies, (2) the slave trade and abolition, (3) Reconstruction and black codes, and (4) the civil rights movement and modern black culture. You don’t need an education doctorate to recognize that you shouldn’t give trendy topics like 'intersectionality and activism' and 'the reparations movement' as much space as weighty aspects of the American experience like 'disenfranchisement and Jim Crow laws' and 'HBCUs and black education'—which is what the initial framework did. The original idea was surely to advance theory and ideology, not history and culture...."
He mentions that the new framework omits both Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas, and agrees that this is a problem. (Especially for lawyers and politicians.)
The other thing it appears to miss out on is including non-American black history outside of Africa. I would think an AP course on the subject would include the experience worldwide of the history of black people. They could study the history of Haiti and see what reparations actually look like from the inside. They could study the history of the slave trade on the east coast of Africa like, where did they all go? What became of them? They could bring in the African post colonial regimes and delve into just how colonialism was hijacked by marxism to the great detriment of the people living there. I found Dr. Ali Mazrui's series on Africa very interesting and I'd be surprised if 1 in 10,000 high school students ever heard of it or saw/read it.
ReplyDelete