AP African American Studies Coming to American High Schools
Categories: US Education News
AP African AmericanStudies Coming to American High Schools
For decades,many US high schools have offered their students rigorous AdvancedPlacement (AP) courses—subjects such as art history, calculus, environmentalscience, and European history. This fall, 60 schools are introducing a newoption: AP African American Studies. Historian Henry Louis Gates Jr., whohelped create the curriculum, says the new curriculum, which schools aretesting in a pilot program, is an important step toward legalizing AfricanAmerican studies.
Gatesinterviewed Time magazine's Olivia B. “Nothing is more dramatic than acollege board introducing an AP course in a field—a symbol of ultimateacceptance and ultimate academic legitimacy,” told Waxman. The AP program,which is overseen by the College Board, allows high school students to takecollege-level classes, which can then be counted for credit at their highereducation institutions.
About 70percent of high schools in the United States offer at least one APcourse. Although the College Board hasn't published the new course syllabus, instructorsparticipating in the pilot program have spoken to Time and other publicationsabout what's included. The curriculum, according to Time, includes a study ofAfricans and their descendants in the U.S. The contribution of 400 years hasbeen examined.
That meansSpanish conquistador Juan Garrido, the first known African to arrive in NorthAmerica, is covered, and so is the significance of Marvel's Black Panther.Inter departmentalism, which shows how different systems of oppression overlap,would also be a key principle of class. Participants in the pilot program willtake a test, but this year they will not receive a score or college credit. “TheAP African American Studies is not CRT,” he tells Time. “This is notProject 1619. It is a mainstream, rigorously vetted, academic approach to avibrant field of study that is half a century old in the American Academy, and,of course, much older in historically black colleges and universities.
Gates saysthat critical race theory and the 1619 Project could be covered in a broaderunit “teaching different theories of the African American experience.” He adds,“I am certainly not advocating employing those theories as interpretiveframeworks for the course itself.” Marlon Williams-Clark, a social studies instructorat a charter school in Tallahassee, Florida, started teaching the pilot classin August.
Just lastyear, the Florida Education Board banned schools from teaching critical racetheory. “You can tell there is a thirst [students] have to obtain this knowledge,”Williams-Clark tells CBS News’ Elaine Quijano and Lana Zak. “I think that thiscourse will be the forerunner for other histories on … marginalized people.”Next year, the College Board intends to expand the pilot with 200 schools. Bythe 2024 school year, it plans to offer A.P. African American Studies tointerested high schools across the country.