AP U.S. History - How Low Will They Go?

On one level it’s been entertaining to watch the College Board scramble to defend its radical new Advanced Placement U.S. History (APUSH) Framework. When the public can see the truth merely by going to the College Board website and reading the Framework, it’s certainly a challenge to prove that the document isn’t what it clearly is – a leftist polemic that presents American history in a relentlessly negative light. An unfortunate recent performance by College Board vice-president Trevor Packer before a Georgia House study committee suggests that the College Board team is cracking under the strain.

The APUSH course that was in effect for decades was a five-page Topic Outline identifying broad categories of material to be covered but relying on state standards for its content. Teachers had a good idea what content to focus on by reviewing the wealth of resources, including past Exams, available to them. The new Framework replaces the Topic Outline with a detailed 142-page tome that purports to be the “required knowledge” for the course. The new Framework even warned, in bold print, that no content outside the Framework would be included on the end-of-course APUSH Exam (under duress, the College Board has removed this statement – without affirming that, in fact, material from state standards may be included on the Exam).

When the APUSH controversy initially flared up, the College Board offered its first defense: Nothing has changed! APUSH teachers will still teach state-standards content just as they always have. That defense morphed into the claim that the previous Exam was much too broad, and that trying to teach the content from state standards was driving APUSH teachers to distraction. So, the College Board said, we’ll make the detailed Framework the focus so that teachers won’t have to worry about extra-Framework content. Thus did the College Board replace its initial nothing-has-changed argument with an everything-has-changed – and for the better! – argument.

Eventually the College Board appeared to settle on a complete refutation of its original nothing-has-changed claim by embracing, and defending, the biased slant of the Framework. APUSH must present the leftist perspective, the College Board suggested, because that’s how American history is taught in college (at least according to the relatively few professors the College Board consulted).

But in his Georgia appearance, AP vice-president Packer seemed to retreat from this retreat, suggesting that the new Framework actually is more conservative than the old Topic Outline because it eliminates the possibility of leftist professors’ including their idiosyncratic questions on the Exam. (This raises the question why, since he has been in charge of APUSH for 11 years, Mr. Packer would have allowed this to happen, but never mind.) The head spins in trying to grasp the shifting defenses.

Mr. Packer bolstered his new position with a cavalcade of demonstrably untrue assertions about the old and new APUSH courses (too many to relate here – they will require their own article). But toward the end of his testimony, Mr. Packer fell back on the time-honored leftist tradition of smearing his opponents – when you don’t have the facts on your side, resort to ad hominem attacks. He first dismissed the concerns of retired APUSH teacher Larry Krieger, who first sounded the alarm on the APUSH putsch, as motivated by greed. Mr. Krieger, declared Mr. Packer with absolute certainty, is merely angry that he’s losing money because his test-preparation book is now outdated by the new Framework.

Does Mr. Packer realize that the best thing that can happen to a writer of test-prep materials is for the test to change – because then he can write new materials, which schools and families will buy to replace the books they already had? Does Mr. Packer know that Mr. Krieger in fact was offered a lucrative contract to write such new materials, but turned it down because he couldn’t in good conscience profit from an APUSH course that was so deeply anti-American?

But Mr. Packer wasn’t finished with his smears. When asked about the anti-APUSH resolution passed by the Texas State Board of Education, Mr. Packer, in gossipy tones, suggested that Texas Board chair Barbara Cargill can’t be trusted because she rejected the requests of university faculty to serve on a history-standards review committee and replaced them with her own pastor.

Once again, however, Mr. Packer was playing fast and loose with the facts. Ms. Cargill did not place her own pastor on any committee, nor did she reject any university professors. Moreover, the pastor she did nominate is a history scholar who has a personal library of 1,500 history books, all of which he has read and can discuss at length. He also has children in the Texas public schools. In other words, he is exactly the kind of person who, under Texas law, should serve on a history-standards review committee. But Mr. Packer chose to engage in gratuitous slander – what does any of this have to do with APUSH anyway? -- to distract attention from the Texas Board’s rebuke of the College Board.

Mr. Packer’s misrepresentations (to use a nice word) about his opponents – made in a public forum in another state – are simply astonishing. Does College Board president David Coleman condone this behavior? Is the College Board so desperate to defend its rewrite of American history, and so bereft of substantive arguments, that it will stoop to falsehoods and slander?

My son took an AP government class in 2007. The textbook was written by Larry Sabato (or at least his name was on the cover...)I flipped through the book and was astounded to see the unabashed pro-union, anti-business, pro-socialism slant of the book. (It was almost like reading the SJ Mercury News....)Additionally there was an insert inside the front cover that was all about global warming and gay marriage. I flipped to the index to see what, if anything was mentioned about religion....there was a single paragraph about how religious people are bigots because they are against gay marriage....Was I shocked? No, this is California but I found it pretty shameless that an AP Government textbook did not focus on the workings of the government from local to state to federal level. Our schools are infested with these types of textbooks and teachers. Be aware, parents!!

I took AP History in 1980/81.

At that time it consisted mostly of leftist propaganda that presented American history in a relentlessly negative light.

I guess some things never change.

I am familiar with someone who took the AP World History prep test last year, as well as the actual test. In both instances, the students were advised that if they shared the substance of any questions on the test (even with their parents), their results would be negated, they’d be prosecuted, etc.

In each test, there is a question with respect to which the source materials for use on the question are provided. On one test, the question was “using these source materials, describe the improvement in conditions for Cuban women as a result of the Castro revolution.” On the other test, the question was “using these source materials, describe the improvement in conditions for the Chinese laborer as a result of the Maoist revolution.”

I haven’t looked at the textbooks in Carolina but I have spoken to some who received a bachelor degree in history from the local university within the past ten years or so and they must have been taught nonsense if they were taught anything at all. They literally could not have passed my EIGHTH GRADE history final, I mean absolutely no chance whatsoever, they might score near zero in fact if they ever took such a test. I questioned why anyone would spend years in school just to get a meaningless degree, if you don’t know anything about your actual MAJOR why have you wasted your time and money for so long going to school?

For the younger generation, the lack of recent historical knowledge is shocking. I’ve worked for a large Aerospace firm as a satellite systems engineer for 30+ years. I heard that Margaret Thatcher died on my way in to work one day. When I came in I said, “Gee, Margaret Thatcher died.” A 25 yr old, Purdue, EE said “Who’s Margaret Thatcher?” I was dumbstruck and thought he was pulling my leg but he was absolutely sincere. Another young engineer came up to me and said that he knew who Margaret Thatcher was. I said, “Yeah, not knowing who Margaret Thatcher is, is like not knowing who Lech Walesa is.” He said, “Who’s Lech Walesa?” The following day the first young engineer came up to me and said, “I found out that Margaret Thatcher was the prime Minister of England. So, What’s the big deal?”

We have a generation, not terribly far removed from the fall of communism and they have NO idea of who/what/why the significance of recent historical events that have changed the course of history.

Most amazing is that some of them are college graduates who majored in history! As I told my wife it is like someone being a carpenter who cannot identify a hammer or a rancher who doesn’t recognize a cow.

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