College board wants to chop AP World History in half

[United Muscovite Nations]

Not really. It's not a profit-driven field. Historical and archaeological research is almost entirely government funded. It's not like historical research sells big outside of academia.

Once again, supply and demand. A job is worth as much as the deficit between its supply and demand for it.

If we were about to "run out" of historians, they'd be paid a lot.

That only works for profit-driven fields. Historians don't produce for the mass market, and don't run a profit. Where would historians make a profit, where would demand come from?

[Petrolheadia]

Once again, supply and demand. A job is worth as much as the deficit between its supply and demand for it.

If we were about to "run out" of historians, they'd be paid a lot.

Where would historians make a profit, where would demand come from?

Teaching, doing paid studies, etc.

[United Muscovite Nations]

Where would historians make a profit, where would demand come from?

Teaching, doing paid studies, etc.

Who pays for the studies?

[Canadensia]

Your opinion on the matter is highly reductionist and minimalist.

Non-STEM fields are important by their very nature. History instills a sense of patriotism and love for one's heritage, which is vital for the survival of any state. Psychology is necessary for dealing with mental illness and ensuring the general population remains mentally fit to go about their daily lives. Sociology and Anthropology are important for understanding both our cultural roots and society at large, which any successful civilizations needs (at least in some rudimentary form) in order to instill a sense of communal and national belonging. And so on and so forth with the many other social sciences.

Sure, perhaps some rather famously derided fields like gender studies are useless and can be cast off like the cancerous, misanthropic trash they truly are; but to deride all the social sciences as useless or unworthy of higher academic pursuit is just short-sighted and ignorant.

I'm not claimng they are useless in general.

I am talking about the idea of learning them as your college field, which in the current job market isn't the best choice for most of them.

Society as a whole can't afford to think like that, though.

A sizable chunk of the population has to be willing to forego personal financial success in lieu of studying these fields. Otherwise, the whole system collapses on itself.

Granted, the current market for social science degrees is already heavily oversaturated, due in no small part to universities having become profit-driven institutions obsessed only with the bottom-line; but that doesn't change the fact that these disciplines (which people generally don't go into with the expectation of making a lot of money) cannot rely on the whims of the current job market. They were never meant to be profit-driven.

[Krasny-Volny]

"effectively eliminating instruction on pre-colonial Africa, Asia, Americas and the Middle East."

Why is Europe missing from this equation?

What about the Roman Empire and Classical Greece?

[Krasny-Volny]

Teaching, doing paid studies, etc.

Who pays for the studies?

Academic journal contacts you about writing a specific topic. You send an article in and receive a small fee for your troubles.

Granted, not all journals pay the people who contribute to their articles, but it's not unheard of.

You can get grants from academic societies, private organisations, and institutes for doing research.

Historians could make a profit if they choose to specialize in some field with practical uses that can go with their degree, ie museum curation, archaeology, or education. Just having a history degree on its own is not very advantageous.

[Ethel mermania]

I am fine with the AP Chopping world history in two. The problem is they are chopping the wrong half. It should be the Greeks up to 1492.

[Serrus]

I am fine with the AP Chopping world history in two. The problem is they are chopping the wrong half. It should be the Greeks up to 1492.

And then the other half is in Euro. Genius!
Honestly, I'd say leave the Agricultural Revolution in as it makes a good "tutorial chapter" for AP newbies. Maybe one question on it actually makes it to the test anyway, so no biggie.

Aw come on, AP world doesn't really teach you anything if you don't start from the beginning. Plus, there's also Greece and Rome which are kind of important as historical topics and the Middle ages. AP Euro already teaches from 1450, if that tells you anything.

The thing is, I took AP world freshman year and it was great. Learning about Egypt, India, Africa, China was tons of fun. And we got to the 21st century still so time was not an issue.

Come to think of it if they cut it off at 1450 the course would be totally boring and I would not take it. Seeing mankind's slow progress from hunter gatherers to civilization to where we are now is a very profound experience and I think other students should have this experience too.

It was so profound it gave me a philosophical knock upside the head. Thanks for making the point I was trying to make.

[The Fields of Asphodel]

I took the old AP World, and sure, it was rushed, but so is every AP class. I do think that it might have been good to start at some point after hunter-gatherers before 600 BC (which is where it used to start, but if you cut out everything before 1450, you lose the ancient Chinese dynasties, ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, and Indus Valley civilizations. You lose ancient Greece and Persia, Alexander the Great, the rise of Rome, the Mauryan and Gupta empires in India, the Han Dynasty in China, and the Moche and Mayan people in the Americas. You lose the fall of Rome and the Byzantine empire, you miss the rise of Keivan Rus in northeastern Europe, you miss the rise of Islam and the Umayyad, Abbasid, and Ottoman empires. You lose everything about African trade, the Bantu-speaking people, Mali, and Zimbabwe. You lose the Sui, Tang, and Song dynasties in China and what was happening around them in Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. You lose the spread of Islam into India and Southeast Asia. You miss Charlemagne and the Holy Roman Empire, feudalism, the crusades, and the Renaissance. You lose civilizations of the Americas like the Mississippians, Toltec, Aztecs, and Incas. You lose the Mongols. You lose the rise of organized religions all around the world. You lose inter-regional trade between East and Southeast Asia and India, between India and the Middle East, and between the Middle East and Africa.

It boils down to this: yes, that combined with the most recent 570 years of history is probably too much for one class, but the class is now cutting out everything before Columbus ‘discovers’ the Americas and the European colonization and exploitation of the areas and cultures the class used to teach about before. There already are AP classes covering American and European history; this was the only AP class to even try to cover ancient civilizations other than Greece and Rome. If College Board had divided it into two classes there, that would have been different; the world changed a lot at that point. My state has divided world history into two classes, but it was split at the fall of Rome. The AP class now covers less than half of what the later world history class does, and you still have to pass the state test to receive credit for the class. I got a 4 on the exam and it’s transferring to my college as two three-credit classes. I’m not sure if the new class will count for anything because it just doesn’t cover enough. I wouldn’t take the class now; it just isn’t worth a block of my schedule and 92 dollars.

Tl;dr: the old class covered 2600+ years of history and counted as 6 college credits and the new one covers 570 and doesn’t meet the state standards for 1 high school credit.

[United Muscovite Nations]

Who pays for the studies?

Academic journal contacts you about writing a specific topic. You send an article in and receive a small fee for your troubles.

Granted, not all journals pay the people who contribute to their articles, but it's not unheard of.

You can get grants from academic societies, private organisations, and institutes for doing research.

Historians could make a profit if they choose to specialize in some field with practical uses that can go with their degree, ie museum curation, archaeology, or education. Just having a history degree on its own is not very advantageous.

Academic journals are pretty much only consumed by other academics. It's not like academic research is some massive industry, it pretty much subsists entirely off of government funding.

You also have to have academics in subjects beyond what the general public is aware of and will pay to listen to. Museums and stuff don't cut it.

Archaeology is also not some huge glamorous field. The only academics who actually make good money are usually people in agricultural sciences, that doesn't mean that academics are useless and need to stop being educated though.

[Shofercia]

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.”

What the ScheiBe?
College Board, are you entirely composed of rich old white dudes? It's not AP WORLD if you're leaving out critical bits of WORLD HISTORY.
The MONGOLS didn't even make the cut FFS. THE MONGOLS! John Green has heard, and he is crying (probably). And I am profoundly disappointed. We already have AP Euro. and that starts in the 1450s, ignoring the Middle Ages and Rome, which IMHO are important to Europe.
Just...what the smurf. Good thing I named my political philosophy after our textbook guy.

Some bureaucrats want to justify their high salaries and useless positions with nonsense like this ^

Why am I not surprised?

[Tekania]

Once again, supply and demand. A job is worth as much as the deficit between its supply and demand for it.

If we were about to "run out" of historians, they'd be paid a lot.

That only works for profit-driven fields. Historians don't produce for the mass market, and don't run a profit. Where would historians make a profit, where would demand come from?

"Production" is not just physical goods. Researching produces something.... and there still is a demand dynamic. The problem generally is that there are more people with history degrees than there is a need for people with history degrees..... and as such while someone with a high specialization may get a good high paying job, the average pay is going to be low because the vast majority of people with those degrees will be pushed into fields that have little to do with their study.

[Valrifell]

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.”

What the ScheiBe?
College Board, are you entirely composed of rich old white dudes? It's not AP WORLD if you're leaving out critical bits of WORLD HISTORY.
The MONGOLS didn't even make the cut FFS. THE MONGOLS! John Green has heard, and he is crying (probably). And I am profoundly disappointed. We already have AP Euro. and that starts in the 1450s, ignoring the Middle Ages and Rome, which IMHO are important to Europe.
Just...what the smurf. Good thing I named my political philosophy after our textbook guy.

Some bureaucrats want to justify their high salaries and useless positions with nonsense like this ^

Why am I not surprised?

The college board is a very private """""""non-profit""""""" institution.

[United Muscovite Nations]

That only works for profit-driven fields. Historians don't produce for the mass market, and don't run a profit. Where would historians make a profit, where would demand come from?

"Production" is not just physical goods. Researching produces something.... and there still is a demand dynamic. The problem generally is that there are more people with history degrees than there is a need for people with history degrees..... and as such while someone with a high specialization may get a good high paying job, the average pay is going to be low because the vast majority of people with those degrees will be pushed into fields that have little to do with their study.

There's not that much market demand for research, it's mostly just based on what can be produced. And even people with high specialization don't always get paid that much. Like I said, most academics aren't well-paid.

[Tierra Fuego]

I think that different teachers overteach and underteach certain periods, which is why I come away thinking that everything before the thirty years war was completely neglected, and only a dollop of Asian and Native American history was taught (they had communist revolutions, Japan used to be organized under a shogunate; they got sick and a lot of them died). Where other people claim to have learned anything about ancient history, and the guy in the article claims he learned a lot about native americans.

Since AP classes are the only classes to offer a rigorous structure that must be taught, it's actually really important when they suggest it to be changed. I didn't take AP world history so I don't know the course contents. We learned more about the Vietnam war than Rome because my teacher happened to be a vet and highly interested in it, he delivered a two-day personal retelling of the whole thing. He only briefly explained the East-West religious schism, and that was the entirety of what we learned about Rome.

I know that any attempt to expand a history class is also going to harm geography, and I know that geography is 100% critical to understanding history and also important for land conservation and that kind of thing. What they need is a three year mega-class covering all aspects of geography/world/American so that this is not a problem. Do it like math courses are done. History 1, 2, 3.

[Nouveau Yathrib]

You ain't going to learn much about history in class anyway. As for "Eurocentrism", it's only natural for Americans and Europeans to focus on their own history.

We already have AP US History for that. Why bother offering the course if it doesn't at least spend some time on the pre-Columbian era?

[Shofercia]

Some bureaucrats want to justify their high salaries and useless positions with nonsense like this ^

Why am I not surprised?

The college board is a very private """""""non-profit""""""" institution.

A private company that's essentially functioning as a Government Agency.

[Valrifell]

The college board is a very private """""""non-profit""""""" institution.

A private company that's essentially functioning as a Government Agency.

At the very least the government wouldn't have three separate paywalls to take a standardized test and have the scores sent out.

[Godular]

The college board is a very private """""""non-profit""""""" institution.

A private company that's essentially functioning as a Government Agency.

Honestly, I have little issue with such a thing. The programs help kids prepare for the rigors of university work, and if it takes a curriculum split in order to accomplish it properly then so be it.

[Auristania]

Genesis chapter 1: and on the eighth day, God created United States of America and History began.

Any "History" before that date is verboten.

[Sovaal]

Euro-centrism is the proper version of history if you're from the US or Europe, Canada, or Australia. The claptrap that liberals push is usually a ton of nonsense. There is no need to spend so much effort to learn history from every single angle. The losers of history usually lost for a reason, they aren't worthy of study unless it is a separate course for extra credit hours or whatever.

Ignorant our talking about Western history sure. But this is about a world history course.

[Eibenland]

It's right to cut it because I've taken AP tests for history. A lot of the multiple choice questions are rote memorization and not necessarily worth having.

[Ethel mermania]

You ain't going to learn much about history in class anyway. As for "Eurocentrism", it's only natural for Americans and Europeans to focus on their own history.

We already have AP US History for that. Why bother offering the course if it doesn't at least spend some time on the pre-Columbian era?

More important for them to learn the history of western thought Which is what the American experience is part of.

[Godular]

Genesis chapter 1: and on the eighth day, God created United States of America and History began.

Any "History" before that date is verboten.

I thought on the 8th day God created Marijuana. 30 seconds later he created Echidnas.

[Serrus]

A private company that's essentially functioning as a Government Agency.

Honestly, I have little issue with such a thing. The programs help kids prepare for the rigors of university work, and if it takes a curriculum split in order to accomplish it properly then so be it.

It...um...it doesn't...
What you need to understand is that the College Board is an arbitrary feudal monarch. Whatever the board desires, regardless of common sense...
it receives.

It's right to cut it because I've taken AP tests for history. A lot of the multiple choice questions are rote memorization and not necessarily worth having.

You got unlucky. The bulk of them are more...analysis based on knowledge. Most rote memorization in class was of critical facts, such as the Chinese dynasties, and even that was handled by mnemonic-like songs.