Why did the College Board change its course?

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2023

Also, could it be that our scholars are wrong?: A new arrival on the front became the topic of general conversation.

It also became the primary focus of our unending culture wars.

The new arrival on the front was the College Board's Advanced Placement course in African American studies. In a fascinating front-page report in this morning's New York Times, a trio of reporters describe the scene when the new AP course was unveiled:

HORTOCOLLIS ET L (2/14/23): On the second night of Black History Month, a sparkling crowd of academics and teachers gathered at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture to celebrate the unveiling of the first ever Advanced Placement course in African American studies.

But clouding the festive mood was a nagging concern. Compared with the original plans for the high school course, it now lacked, or had less of, certain topics that people at the gathering thought were essential to the discipline, like Black Lives Matter and reparations. And they wondered if the explanation was pressure from Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a probable Republican presidential candidate who has railed against what he calls “woke indoctrination” in schools.

What could explain the missing mentions of queer studies and police brutality, and the new inclusion of Black Republicans, like Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice?

The College Board was unveiling an introductory course for high school students. As the Times explained a bit later on, the Board had decided ro create a course in "African American studies" rather than "a more conventional history course."

Be that as it may! The question we would start with is this:

Do you understand why an introductory high school course in African American studies would include a unit, or perhaps a few lessons, on "queer theory?" Also, are you sure you want to see blue tribe politicians going head-to-head with Candidate Ron DeSantis over a culture war topic like that?

The lengthy New York Times report presents a fascinating overview of the process by which this new AP course was created. It seems quite clear, at several junctures, that the College Board misled the public about the extent to which they adjusted their original course in response to objections and criticisms from DeSantis World, an emerging Florida theme park.

It also seems fairly clear that the College Board misled the professors and experts with whom it had designed the original course. As to who those professors and experts are, the Times describes them in this general way at several points in the report:

HORTOCOLLIS ET AL: In today’s political climate, a dispute may have been unavoidable. African American studies has roots in the civil rights and students’ movements of the 1960s. Its left-leaning scholars often see their discipline as part of an anti-racist social justice movement.

[...]

But after the murder of George Floyd in 2020 inspired global protest, the College Board decided to roll out an African American studies class, with a strong emphasis on United States history, politics and culture. The selection of African American studies instead of a more conventional history course was pivotal, putting the staid, mainstream College Board into close contact with a left-leaning group of scholars deeply engaged in contemporary politics.

Stating the obvious, there's nothing necessarily wrong with being a "left-leaning scholar." There isn't any obvious reason why the College Board shouldn't have consulted with "left-leaning scholars" as it developed its course.

That said, there also isn't any guarantee that groups of "left-leaning scholars," however erudite and well-intentioned, will necessarily come up with the wisest plan for an introductory course on a challenging topic—an introductory course designed for use in public high schools nationwide. 

Especially to the extent that such left-leaning scholars are "deeply engaged in contemporary politics," it's possible that their ideas, however well-intentioned, may not always trace the wisest path for a group like the College Board to follow.

In theory, the College Board's Advanced Placements courses will go into public schools in all fifty states. Especially at times of high partisanship, it's important that the Board shows good judgment in the decisions it makes—and that's especially true concerning the vitally important topics involved in this new course.

In this instance, the Board has designed a course in a field which is unavoidably rich with political overtones. Here, for example, is a slightly fuller passage than one we have posted above:

HORTOCOLLIS ET AL: In today’s political climate, a dispute may have been unavoidable. African American studies has roots in the civil rights and students’ movements of the 1960s. Its left-leaning scholars often see their discipline as part of an anti-racist social justice movement.

For many conservatives, the field is an example of liberal orthodoxy run amok. They have argued the very premise of it, and called for an approach to Black history that focuses on heroic figures of the past and stays away from contemporary political debates or academic theorizing.

In theory, this new AP course is being designed to serve public school students from all over the country. Also, to serve students who hail from families with various political views.

This AP course isn't being designed for use in a private college with a particular orientation or point of view. In the following passage, the Times describes the way the course had been designed before the College Board responded to challenge and criticism from one side of the national aisle:

HORTOCOLLIS ET AL: The February 2022 document, based mostly on a survey of college syllabuses, included Black queer studies, womanism (a form of Black feminism), mass incarceration, reparations and Black Lives Matter.

It stated that students should understand “structural racism,” “racial formation” and “racial capitalism.”

And the February document also included intersectionality, a fundamental concept in Black studies that refers to the complex ways that overlapping categories of identity—such as race, class, sex and gender—shape individual experiences of the world.

Over the following 11 months, most of those concepts gradually dropped out of the course’s required topics.

We're not saying that any part of that original design was "wrong."

We're also not saying that every part of that original design actually made good sense. Also, we're going to ask those questions again:

Are you sure you understand why "Black queer studies" and "womanism (a form of Black feminism)" should be included in an introductory high school course for use in the public schools? Are you really super-sure that you really understand that?

Also this:

Do you want to see your Democratic candidate arguing with Candidate DeSantis about the presence of those elements in the (very important) high school course our very dumb tribe would be sponsoring?

We haven't seen the original plan for the new AP course. We haven't seen the plan for the course as it has ended up.

We do know this:

Our rampaging blue tribe's "left-leaning scholars" are fully capable of losing elections all by themselves, on their own, without any help from others. We'll also offer this:

We're inclined to regard DeSantis as a demagogue and as a bully. But that doesn't mean that he's always wrong when he lands on a culture war issue. 

In any given case, he might be right—he might be disastrously right—when it comes to the politics. In this particular case, he might even be right on the merits, given the audience for whom this course is being developed. Our own tribe's scholars, such as they are, may sometimes turn out to be wrong!

There's a great deal more to be said about this fascinating report in the New York Times. We'll close by saying that the New York Times' Dana Goldstein embarrassed herself yesterday by the highly selective way she described the report on Deadline: White House.

Goldstein is on the verge of becoming one of Nicolle Wallace's "favorite reporters and friends." She picked and chose from among the contents of the report as she discussed it with Wallace, in a way we'd be inclined to regard as less than obsessively honest.

We blue tribe members get misled as we watch such cable discussions. This serves the interests of Candidate DeSantis.

The other tribe owns this nation too. With that obvious fact in mind, we close this chapter with a warning:

The corporate stars we see on cable are full of passionate intensity, but they're often deeply unwise, even demagogue-adjacent. It's also true that our "left-leaning scholars" could imaginably lose a White House election pretty much all by themselves.

As for you yourself, we ask you to riddle us this:

Can you live without insisting on constructing and denouncing the Other? A certain apparent demagogue / bully apparently plans to find out!