AP World History gets a makeover, and high school teachers rebel
By BENJAMIN WERMUND
06/11/2018 06:42 AM EDT
High school history teachers are in revolt over the alteration of a widely taught Advanced Placement course that they say threatens to present a skewed, Eurocentric history of the world to thousands of students.
The plan is so incendiary that outraged history teachers protested against it this week at an open forum in Salt Lake City, Utah, with Trevor Packer, senior vice president of Advanced Placement and instruction at the College Board. A video of a testy exchange between Packer and the teachers has been shared hundreds of times online. The standoff touches on issues of culture, color and history with which schools — and society — have been wrangling.
Under the controversial changes, a popular AP World History course would begin in 1450 — essentially the rise of European power — effectively eliminating instruction on pre-colonial Africa, Asia, Americas and the Middle East. Earlier eras would be relegated to a pre-AP course that isn’t tested.
The College Board says it’s making the change because the current class covers too much and most colleges teach similar content as two separate courses. But teachers say the pre-AP course, for which the College Board charges a fee, isn’t likely to be picked up by cash-strapped public schools. And it’s not likely to be taken by students, who can’t earn college credit off a course with no exam or seal of approval as an AP course.
The change in World History matters, teachers say, because AP courses essentially set curriculum for many high schools across the country. Millions of students take Advanced Placement classes, rigorous courses in dozens of subjects, through which they can earn college credit by passing an end-of-course exam.
Students taking the new post-1450 course will lose a broad global understanding of history, teachers say.
“In a world that is fueled by quick reactions on social media, bias news (in all directions) and people responding on passion rather than facts, AP World History is needed more than ever,” Tyler George, who teaches AP World History in Clinton, Mich., said in an email.
“Students need to understand that there was a beautiful, vast and engaging world before Europeans ‘discovered’ it. Students need guidance and knowledge of the past to understand that when they hear ‘Africa’ they shouldn’t immediately think ‘slavery,’” George said.
Even some students are pushing back. An online petition — launched by a high school freshman who took the AP World History course — has drawn thousands of signatures from folks urging the College Board to change its mind.
“I’ve been teaching AP for a decade and I’ve never seen a hornet’s nest stirred up like this,” Tom Richey, who teaches an AP European History course in Seneca, S.C., told POLITICO.
The plan was announced by the College Board this spring and is set to take effect in the 2019-20 school year. The College Board contends it is a response to feedback from teachers who complained that the current setup stuffs too much into a single course, which covers everything from the Stone Age to the present.
The change “would spread this important and valuable content across two academic years, rather than just one,” said Zach Goldberg, a College Board spokesman, in an email.
But after the backlash, Packer wrote on Twitter that the plan could still shift again. Packer wrote that “constructive feedback … has suggested a path forward that will enable us to achieve several priorities that I believe we share and can agree on.” He said the organization will report back on its final plans in July.
The comments, however, followed intense pushback, including at the forum this week.
“You are the authority on our curriculum, because it’s on the test, and the schools want to teach what’s on the test and students want to learn what’s on the test,” Amanda DoAmaral, who taught AP World History in Oakland, Calif., for five years, told Packer.
“You cannot tell my black and brown students that their history is not going to be tested and then assume that isn’t going to matter. … Their histories don’t start at slavery. Their histories don’t start at colonization.”
In the video of the exchange, Packer can be heard responding, “I think you need to take responsibility for assigning me a position that is not accurate.” He says his position is not that that time period isn’t important, but “I think it is so important that it should not be rushed over.”
Packer later says, “Let me put this back on you: Why don’t you switch” and teach the new pre-AP course?
DoAmaral responded that schools can’t afford to offer the new course: “They don’t have the money for pencils, dude. How are they going to teach that class?”
DoAmaral told POLITICO that she stopped teaching last year “because I literally couldn't afford to do it anymore.” She now runs a startup that offers AP instruction online via livestream.
According to a fee structure for the 2019-2020 school year, schools would be charged anywhere from $600 to $6,500 to offer the new pre-AP course, depending on the size of the school and the number of other pre-AP courses it offers.
The College Board doesn’t charge fees for AP courses, but it does charge students $94 for each exam that they don’t take in pre-AP.
Writing on Twitter about the decision to revisit the changes, Packer cited “particularly balanced, thoughtful, and productive suggestions” from teachers he received after that open forum.
But while the College Board is reconsidering how to proceed, it still appears the course will be broken in two, a move officials say will bring it more in line with how world history is taught in college.
“It’s simply not feasible to cover the entire scope, starting in 8000 BC to the present, in one course,” Rick Warner, an associate professor of history at Wabash College in Indiana who is on the College Board committee considering the change, said in a statement.
“The changes to AP World History will benefit teachers and students, enabling them to focus much more care and attention on studying modern world history through a truly global lens, so that students who then take further history classes in college will have the knowledge and skills to succeed,” he said.
DoAmaral said she was hopeful the College Board would reverse course, but wasn’t appeased yet.
“Due to our collective passions for equitable history education, it is clear that College Board is listening,” DoAmaral said. “I hope that they continue to listen as we work together to create an inclusive history curriculum — one that teaches Africa before slavery, the Americas before Columbus, and Asia before imperialism. Our students deserve more than for us to start the story in the middle.”
Even if schools do shell out for the new pre-AP course, students might be less inclined to take it, said Dylan Black, a high school freshman in New Jersey who started the online petition against the change. That’s because students who pass AP exams can earn college credit.
Pre-AP courses, which don’t end with an exam, are “just a fancier way of saying an honors course,” Black said. “There’s no real value to it.”
Black wrote on the petition, which had more than 4,700 signatures as of Friday afternoon, that “the class is demanding on students, but is also one of the most rewarding, life changing classes I've ever had the privilege to take.”
Noah Mitchell, a junior at a high school in Oakland, Calif. who took the world history course as a sophomore, said learning especially about the earlier periods “opened my eyes.”
“It would be cutting down so many people's different histories — like Asian history before imperialism, American history before Columbus and African history before slavery. … I’m not sure I would have known a lot of my own history before slavery,” Mitchell told POLITICO.
“There are so many students who are being told they don’t matter outside of the classroom. … Really, the message that this would be sending is that their histories don’t really matter.”
