AP history courses draw ideological fire
Much like a sizable portion of the SMIC student body, I’ve had personal experience with the AP history courses on offer here. As many know, we follow the established precedent of World History sophomore year, US History junior year, and now the addition of European History as an elective—all the while bemoaning the course load, the exam in May, and just College Board in general.
Many, I’m sure, have also seen at some point the framework guidelines the AP courses are structured on, infuriatingly spelling out all the places the Mongols conquered or the exports of every one of the thirteen colonies that we have to know. What’s less obvious, though, is what lies behind each of those guidelines: a fierce debate over how history should be taught to high school students, sparking from a widening gulf between the ideological right and left.
Most of the spotlight and rancor has, unsurprisingly, focused on AP US History. Back in 2014, when College Board published a revised framework for the course, criticism from conservative media and historians was swift, robust, and slightly alarmist (kids will want to “sign up for ISIS”!)1 The argument went that College Board had allowed the redesigning of APUSH to be taken over by leftist historians, most notably Thomas Bender, a leading figure in pushing for American history to be grounded in a more international context. Right-wing critics pointed to Bender’s book A Nation Among Nations, which surrendered American exceptionalism for transnationalism, and his participation in the La Pietra Report, aiming to align American history with globalization, as evidence that the new APUSH course would brainwash children with deeply skewed, radical propaganda. What happened, as Stanley Kurtz laments in his National Review article, to Columbus discovering America, the Pilgrims on the Mayflower, John Winthrop’s “City on a Hill”—so-called traditional history? Why were children force-fed a concoction of the American narrative being rooted in the slave trade and international capitalism, composed by a group of historians of which a third wasn’t even American2?
The back-and-forth between the right and left on the APUSH framework has even extended to other AP History courses. Critics harangue about the portrayal of the Industrial Revolution as bringing equal misery and prosperity rather than just prosperity in European History. Others attack how the atrocities committed by non-white peoples are not given enough emphasis in World History3.
Granted, the new APUSH does seek a more international and critical view. But it isn’t the only fuel feeding the anger of the ideological right.
History reveals a pattern. In the aftermath of the Civil War, historians fought over how the conflict would be taught in school. Following the entry into World War I, politicians fought over whether to allow textbooks critical to the nation. In the footsteps of the first Red Scare in the 1920s, state officials fought over if materials that spoke negatively of the republic’s founders should be banned4. The teaching of history has always been a political issue, one that increases in divisiveness with the nation’s polarization, and the animosity over APUSH is just the newest manifestation of a generational dispute.
What do I think? I think this fight over how history should be taught in school has no ending, not one that I can see. There will, in all likelihood, always be conflict over how the past is portrayed, same as the fact that teaching history will always factor in bias, whether intentional or unintentional. The new, more detailed College Board guidelines might be seen simply as setting aside the narrative that history are written by the winners as they unearth the voices of the losers. However, that’s no indication the new curriculums are unbiased. Deciding the perspectives of which “winners” to keep, which “losers” to teach, how to even determine which is which—none of that’s possible without incorporating bias.
But returning to the issue at hand, I don’t think it’s a question of if the new APUSH framework is advancing a leftist agenda, or if it’s unfairly sacrificing American exceptionalism. Rather, I agree with historian Adam Laats; it’s the question of “what history class is supposed to be for.
“Is the point of history class to introduce young Americans to their heritage of heroes, the glories of American history? Or is history class supposed to make young people into critical examiners of their society, a true civic education that teaches American young people to question every bit of received wisdom and be ready to change what needs changing?”5
I, for one, know my answer.
_______________
1 Hartman, Andrew. 2021. “The Internationalization Of The U.S. History Curriculum | The American Historian”. Oah.Org. Accessed December 7. https://www.oah.org/tah/issues/2015/february/internationalization-of-us-history-curriculum/.
2 Kurtz, Stanley. 2014. “How The College Board Politicized U.S. History | National Review”. Nationalreview.Com. https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/how-college-board-politicized-us-history-stanley-kurtz/.
3 Hess, Frederick M. 2016. “Judging The College Board’S New AP European History Framework”. AEI. https://www.aei.org/education/k-12-schooling/judging-the-college-boards-new-ap-european-history-framework/.
4 Waxman, Olivia B. 2020. “How U.S. History Is Taught Has Always Been Political”. Time. https://time.com/5889051/history-curriculum-politics/.
5 Waxman, “How U.S. History Is Taught Is Political.”
Feature Image — A pile of books
Bibliography
Kurtz, Stanley. 2014. “How The College Board Politicized U.S. History | National Review”. Nationalreview.Com. https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/how-college-board-politicized-us-history-stanley-kurtz/.
Waxman, Olivia B. 2020. “How U.S. History Is Taught Has Always Been Political”. Time. https://time.com/5889051/history-curriculum-politics/.
Hess, Frederick M. 2016. “Judging The College Board’S New AP European History Framework”. AEI. https://www.aei.org/education/k-12-schooling/judging-the-college-boards-new-ap-european-history-framework/.
Hartman, Andrew. 2021. “The Internationalization Of The U.S. History Curriculum | The American Historian”. Oah.Org. Accessed December 7. https://www.oah.org/tah/issues/2015/february/internationalization-of-us-history-curriculum/.