After two new reports about the
College
Boardâs Advanced Placement African American Studies Course, reasonable people should have two major objections to the APAAS â one objection to its specific content and one on grounds of broader principle.
This AP course is in the news because appointees of
Gov. Ron DeSantis
(R-FL) rejected it, calling it contrary to a new state law, and then White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre mendaciously said DeSantis âwants to blockâ the âstudy of black Americans.â Now, reports in the past four days in the
Florida Standard
and in the
National Review
demonstrate just how radical, indeed toxic, the APAAS is in its current form.
Rather than being a neutral, apolitical survey of the subject matter, the APAAS pushes astonishingly one-sided Marxist content that by ordinary definitions is flat-out racist. It also effectively endorses books pushing âthe hatred of bourgeois society and the readiness to destroy itâ and justifying âpassions of violenceâ among black people while actually criticizing ânonviolent civil rights activists.â The curriculum and teachersâ guide lack anything that remotely balances those views with more moderate ideas. Moreover, the entire APAAS agenda clearly is designed not just for learning but for promoting left-wing political activism.
One section of the course syllabus, according to the Florida Standard, âincludes âBlack Queer Studies.â A description states: âThis topic explores the concept of queer color critique, grounded in Black feminism and intersectionality, as a Black studies lens that shifts sexuality studies towards racial analysis.ââ
Huh? This is tendentious stuff even for college graduate students. And the same tommyrot apparently suffuses the entire APAAS enterprise.
Remember, this is for a course in which high school students, minors, can earn college credit. Nobody in good conscience should be using school systems to foist any content- or viewpoint-specific political activism on minor children, much less nostrums so radical, so antithetical to most American parentsâ outlooks, and without even the slightest attempt to provide opposing viewpoints or context. This isnât education; itâs radical ideological indoctrination of impressionable children without fully adult brain development.
In sum, this specific content is anathema. Ditto for the broader idea of using the weight of the education establishment to push any political agenda, right or left. DeSantis is right to keep this contagion of indoctrination away from Florida schools.
Still, a broader point bears considering, one divorced from the specific content of this version of âblack studies.â It involves a more sweeping concern, one that suggests a comprehensive problem in which the entire U.S. educational system has forgotten the basics of its function and purpose.
Primary and secondary education should be focused on foundational knowledge, on âhow toâ skills, and on the development of critical thinking abilities. It should be decidedly not the role of educators at that level to infuse childrenâs minds with any content-specific opinions, much less politicized ones.
The original reason for AP courses was to avoid making advanced students repeat the higher-level building blocks in college that some had learned in high school. Either a student knows entry-level college math or he doesnât. Either she has basic proficiency in a foreign language or she doesnât. And even in English or language skills, which is slightly less objective, an AP test can show whether a student already has mastered college-level use of grammar, vocabulary, and essay-organizing skills. If so, the colleges could give credit for it without making the student waste time repeating the exercise.
Now, however, there are 38 (!) different AP courses. They range into far more subjective disciplines such as âcomparative government and politicsâ or âhuman geographyâ that âexamine[s] patterns of human population, migration, and land use.â Why should high school students receive college credit for such things without studying them in a collegiate context with expert professors, surrounded by equally advanced fellow students in what is supposed to be a milieu of open inquiry that universities, not high schools, are designed to foster?
Moreover, allowing AP credit for these more subjective disciplines allows the introduction of ideological, political, or cultural indoctrination in minds not yet fully adept at critical and contextual thinking. The overabundance of AP credit amounts to a perversion of what should be an orderly, rational educational process.
The broader problem, then, isnât just with the AP African American Studies Course. Wise policymakers and educators at all levels should restrict the AP smorgasbord to only core disciplines. This way, students would get the full benefits of a college education by actually earning their credits in, yes, actual colleges.
