Oklahoma Bans AP US History

[Nerotysia]

So, the Republican-controlled Oklahoma legislature has voted to ban Advanced Placement for US History for being too "unpatriotic".

No.
According to the rather limited, biased report you quoted,
some legislators voted to withhold funding for a very specific curriculum of which they had very specific concerns.
That you judge without presenting any information about the curriculum,
or any specific consideration of their concerns,
tells me more about you than about them.

I've seen the common core history curriculum.
I would refer to it as a joke,
but jokes are supposed to be funny.
An AP graduate would be unable to pass a US citizenship test.

The secondary mathematics are not as bad as some have claimed.
A lot of the primary mathematics are quite obtuse.

So, since you seem to be so angry about it, would you like to cite specific problems with the AP US history course? Assuming you've actually taken it.

[Bezkoshtovnya]

Because Wounded Knee, Sand Creek, and The damn Trail of Tears are all good things, right? Why on earth would we consider the massacre of innocent men, women and children bad? You're right, it's completely unreasonable. We must change history and how it's taught to make US look most glorious, a institution that cannot and has never done any wrong.

Yeah what were we thinking, treating our enemy badly in war.
I have no problem with those things being taught, the problem is it's always potrayed as.
"Evil white man killed and oppressed the poor noble innocent indians for no reason".
How many of the countless raids on white settlers are we ever taught about in school, fucking none.
So what do you call that? Whitewashing isn't it? Except against our own ancestors, to prop up all this white guilt bullshit.

Fuck that, if your gonna bitch about covering up unpleasant history then you better argue against that narrative as well. Unless you want to be a hypocrite.

War? Is that what we call gunning down unarmed civilians now? Yes, some conflicts with natives was war, but several incidents did not involve combat at all. It was unarmed civilians that were killed. How are we supposed to learn about that in a positive way? We did kill and oppress them, and that is what we learn. The curriculum does not teach that white men were evil and natives are saints in any way.

[Yumyumsuppertime]

So, the Republican-controlled Oklahoma legislature has voted to ban Advanced Placement for US History for being too "unpatriotic".

No.
According to the rather limited, biased report you quoted,
some legislators voted to withhold funding for a very specific curriculum of which they had very specific concerns.
That you judge without presenting any information about the curriculum,
or any specific consideration of their concerns,
tells me more about you than about them.

I've seen the common core history curriculum.
I would refer to it as a joke,
but jokes are supposed to be funny.
An AP graduate would be unable to pass a US citizenship test.

The secondary mathematics are not as bad as some have claimed.
A lot of the primary mathematics are quite obtuse.

What parts of the AP curriculum (not Common Core, which is a different thing) do you consider troubling?

[The New Sea Territory]

The idiots have taken over!

[The New Sea Territory]

snip

[The New Sea Territory]

"Evil white man killed and oppressed the poor noble innocent indians for no reason".

Pretty accurate, minus the no reason part, because the white people wanted land, and the "noble" and "evil", because morality is like....your opinion, man...

[Yumyumsuppertime]

"Evil white man killed and oppressed the poor noble innocent indians for no reason".

Pretty accurate, minus the no reason part, because the white people wanted land, and the "noble" and "evil", because morality is like....your opinion, man...

Exactly. One does not have to see the natives as noble innocents, nor the settlers as purely evil oppressors and murderers, in order to say that we committed horrific and unnecessary atrocities.

[Maineiacs]

We expanded for the well being of our nation and economy, they integrated into our society and it was frankly inevitable anyway. Maybe we should've been a bit nicer about it, but we were going to expand either way.

That is not an excuse for genocide. At all.

"Yep, we nearly wiped your people off the planet, we cut your hair, took your children away, forced you to be Christian, took away your language, and turned your ancestral homelands into condominiums and shopping malls. Sorry, we needed to expand."

Couldn't help thinking of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQ6RjP7MlXk

[Murkwood]

An AP graduate would be unable to pass a US citizenship test.

Good. That means they're too smart for stupid nationalist rhetoric.

What part of the Citizenship test is "stupid nationalist rhetoric"?

[Atlanticatia]

An AP graduate would be unable to pass a US citizenship test.

The class isn't about teaching the US citizenship test. It's about teaching an in-depth history of the United States, and encouraging critical thinking. It's not about teaching how to be a 'good citizen'. It is also about preparing students for university - many universities will accept Advanced Placement test scores as an exemption for university-level history courses, or at least providing a leg-up when choosing classes. Perhaps we should just have everyone take a class on how to pass the citizenship test and learn about all the good things America has done, while ignoring all the bad.

[The United Colonies of Earth]

An AP graduate would be unable to pass a US citizenship test.

Good. That means they're too smart for stupid nationalist rhetoric.

Could you elaborate? I thought the test had stuff on American law and some history, not...nationalist rhetoric.

[The New Sea Territory]

Good. That means they're too smart for stupid nationalist rhetoric.

What part of the Citizenship test is "stupid nationalist rhetoric"?

I'm really just fucking around with that one. For a serious response:

The class isn't about teaching the US citizenship test. It's about teaching an in-depth history of the United States, and encouraging critical thinking. It's not about teaching how to be a 'good citizen'. It is also about preparing students for university - many universities will accept Advanced Placement test scores as an exemption for university-level history courses, or at least providing a leg-up when choosing classes. Perhaps we should just have everyone take a class on how to pass the citizenship test and learn about all the good things America has done, while ignoring all the bad.

[The New Sea Territory]

Good. That means they're too smart for stupid nationalist rhetoric.

Could you elaborate? I thought the test had stuff on American law and some history, not...nationalist rhetoric.

See post above.

[The New Sea Territory]

An AP graduate would be unable to pass a US citizenship test.

The class isn't about teaching the US citizenship test. It's about teaching an in-depth history of the United States, and encouraging critical thinking. It's not about teaching how to be a 'good citizen'. It is also about preparing students for university - many universities will accept Advanced Placement test scores as an exemption for university-level history courses, or at least providing a leg-up when choosing classes. Perhaps we should just have everyone take a class on how to pass the citizenship test and learn about all the good things America has done, while ignoring all the bad.

[The United Colonies of Earth]

An AP graduate would be unable to pass a US citizenship test.

The class isn't about teaching the US citizenship test. It's about teaching an in-depth history of the United States, and encouraging critical thinking. It's not about teaching how to be a 'good citizen'. It is also about preparing students for university - many universities will accept Advanced Placement test scores as an exemption for university-level history courses, or at least providing a leg-up when choosing classes. Perhaps we should just have everyone take a class on how to pass the citizenship test and learn about all the good things America has done, while ignoring all the bad.

That's a bad class. It's unnecessary and distorts history. But I suppose that was your point.
To borrow from The New Sea Territory:

[Nerotysia]

The class isn't about teaching the US citizenship test. It's about teaching an in-depth history of the United States, and encouraging critical thinking. It's not about teaching how to be a 'good citizen'. It is also about preparing students for university - many universities will accept Advanced Placement test scores as an exemption for university-level history courses, or at least providing a leg-up when choosing classes. Perhaps we should just have everyone take a class on how to pass the citizenship test and learn about all the good things America has done, while ignoring all the bad.

That's a bad class. It's unnecessary and distorts history.

EDIT: Edit changed things, sorry.

[Shaggtopia]

"Fisher said Monday that the AP U.S. History course emphasizes "what is bad about America" and complained that the framework eliminated the concept of "American exceptionalism," according to the Tulsa World."

Why exactly is wrong with looking at the faults of our predecessors? Why is it so dangerous to question the concept of American exceptionalism? Isn't WORLD history littered with tales where failing to question the established historical dogma (you know, the fake shit people make up to gloss over genocide, or civil wars amoung gods 'chosen' people) has been the direct cause of the decline of that empire? Isn't is MORE dangerous to ignore clear patterns?

However I understand the whole 'obsessive negativity' too, it's not really objective. Still, I'd prefer negative history be taught honestly to blind nationalism. The German Nazis tried the blind nationalism thing, and look how that shit turned out.

[Atlanticatia]

Also, example from the APUSH class I took:

We were taught that America expanded westward and acquired new territory, the colonist settlers populated it, and it being apart of the US contributed to the economic prosperity that followed. We also learned that Native Americans were killed, had their lands stolen, relocated via the Trail of Tears, etc.

I think that's very balanced -- you can't *just* teach that America expanded westward, had economic prosperity, and not talk about the bad parts that happened.

Also, if we didn't talk about the horrible things done to Native Americans, that'd be extremely disrespectful to them. They've faced institutional racism and discrimination for hundreds of years, and are still treated differently and do worse than the average American. America treated, and continues to treat, its indigenous population terribly. To understand current social issues and the history of Native Americans, it's important to know how they were oppressed. That's all apart of history - it's not "white guilt". It's history.

[Ripoll]

We expanded for the well being of our nation and economy, they integrated into our society and it was frankly inevitable anyway. Maybe we should've been a bit nicer about it, but we were going to expand either way.

That is not an excuse for genocide. At all.

"Yep, we nearly wiped your people off the planet, we cut your hair, took your children away, forced you to be Christian, took away your language, and turned your ancestral homelands into condominiums and shopping malls. Sorry, we needed to expand."

It wasn't really genocide, like at all. The US found itself in countless Indian alliances to kill other Indians, it wasn't that we had a systematic hatred for Indians, it was simply that we needed to expand. They weren't defenseless either, yea sure we did some really bad things, and we shouldn't be afraid to scold those actions, but were they understandable in the context of history? Absolutely.

That's what history classes do teach us, never look at history with the mindset of a 21st century outlook. Look at history the way people living through it would have. Then you can compare it to today, and that's how progress is made. Understanding it all, then correcting it.

[Ripoll]

Learning about history doesn't mean we can't have national pride, and it doesn't mean we shouldn't be patriotic. On the contrary, it should strengthen that patriotism knowing and acknowledging how far we've come so we can be more enthusiastic about how to fix those problems in times to come.

[Scomagia]

That is not an excuse for genocide. At all.

"Yep, we nearly wiped your people off the planet, we cut your hair, took your children away, forced you to be Christian, took away your language, and turned your ancestral homelands into condominiums and shopping malls. Sorry, we needed to expand."

It wasn't really genocide, like at all. The US found itself in countless Indian alliances to kill other Indians, it wasn't that we had a systematic hatred for Indians, it was simply that we needed to expand. They weren't defenseless either, yea sure we did some really bad things, and we shouldn't be afraid to scold those actions, but were they understandable in the context of history? Absolutely.

That's what history classes do teach us, never look at history with the mindset of a 21st century outlook. Look at history the way people living through it would have. Then you can compare it to today, and that's how progress is made. Understanding it all, then correcting it.

It was genocide by definition. Stop whitewashing history.

[Yumyumsuppertime]

Learning about history doesn't mean we can't have national pride, and it doesn't mean we shouldn't be patriotic. On the contrary, it should strengthen that patriotism knowing and acknowledging how far we've come so we can be more enthusiastic about how to fix those problems in times to come.

Exactly! One of the things that I love most about this nation is that it's based upon the acknowledgment of the inevitability and necessity of change, which is something that many self-styled patriots seem to forget.

[The Orson Empire]

Hi, Oklahoman (and lover of history) here. Interesting article.

Is this ridiculous? Yes.

I'd like to find out what parts if not the whole thing that they consider "unpatriotic" but whatever.

Another fellow Oklahoman on NSG? I thought I would never see the day!!

And once again, my home state fucks up. I'm glad I already took AP US history last year.

[The United Colonies of Earth]

Also, example from the APUSH class I took:

We were taught that America expanded westward and acquired new territory, the colonist settlers populated it, and it being apart of the US contributed to the economic prosperity that followed. We also learned that Native Americans were killed, had their lands stolen, relocated via the Trail of Tears, etc.

I think that's very balanced -- you can't *just* teach that America expanded westward, had economic prosperity, and not talk about the bad parts that happened.

Also, if we didn't talk about the horrible things done to Native Americans, that'd be extremely disrespectful to them. They've faced institutional racism and discrimination for hundreds of years, and are still treated differently and do worse than the average American. America treated, and continues to treat, its indigenous population terribly. To understand current social issues and the history of Native Americans, it's important to know how they were oppressed. That's all apart of history - it's not "white guilt". It's history.

You are truly worthy of being an AP student. I wish we had a salute emoticon. Anyway,

Learning about history doesn't mean we can't have national pride, and it doesn't mean we shouldn't be patriotic. On the contrary, it should strengthen that patriotism knowing and acknowledging how far we've come so we can be more enthusiastic about how to fix those problems in times to come.

Exactly! One of the things that I love most about this nation is that it's based upon the acknowledgment of the inevitability and necessity of change, which is something that many self-styled patriots seem to forget.

In addition to that:
The Constitution has an amendment process for a reason! The Founders knew we needed it.

[Ordia]

Hi, Oklahoman (and lover of history) here. Interesting article.

Is this ridiculous? Yes.

I'd like to find out what parts if not the whole thing that they consider "unpatriotic" but whatever.

Another fellow Oklahoman on NSG? I thought I would never see the day!!

And once again, my home state fucks up. I'm glad I already took AP US history last year.

Hahaha, same here! I knew another on here, but that was a long time ago...