Tag Archives: APUSH

Rewriting European History

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I have previously written about the rewriting of Advanced Placement U.S. History (APUSH) (here and here).

To review some quotes about the revised American history from previous articles:

Here is a sampling of what our nation’s brightest high-school students can expect:

  • A relentlessly negative view of American history, which emphasizes every problem and failing of our ancestors while ignoring or minimizing their achievements.
  • Almost total silence about the Founding Fathers, including no mention of Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, and Adams, and almost none of the Declaration of Independence.
  • Omission of military history, battles, commanders, and heroes.
  • A biased and inaccurate view of many important facets of American history, including the motivations and actions of 17th-19th-century settlers, American involvement in World War II, and the conduct of and victory in the Cold War.

Now the College Board is preparing to edit European history so that it is no longer recognizable. Paul Mirengoff posted an article at Power Line yesterday about the changes.

The article reports:

The invaluable National Association of Scholars is publishing a 12,000-word critique of the new AP European History (APEH) exam. The report, written by David Randall, is titled The Disappearing Continent.

The article quotes the major findings from the report:

1) APEH presents the history of government rather than of liberty.

2) APEH presents religion throughout as an instrument of power rather than as an autonomous sphere of European history.

3) APEH treats the movement to abolish slavery without mentioning how it was inspired by religious faith, led by saints such as William Wilberforce, and hymned to Amazing Grace.

4) APEH underplays British history throughout, thus minimizing the importance of Britain’s distinctive history in the European tradition as the champion of liberty.

5) APEH minimizes and extenuates the evils of Communism, the brutal destructiveness of Soviet rule, and the aggressiveness of Soviet foreign policy.

6) APEH virtually ignores Europe’s unique development of the architecture of modern knowledge, which made possible almost every modern form of intellectual inquiry.

7) APEH doesn’t argue that European history is important or interesting in itself. APEH never gives a reason why students should study Europe’s history in particular.

In addition, APEH omits key figures ranging from Christopher Columbus to Winston Churchill. It seems impossible that Churchill would be airbrushed out of a European History course until one remembers how inconvenient he is for leftists.

In an article posted at the National Review yesterday, Stanley Kurtz provides the answer to the College Board’s rewriting of history:

Once the College Board has finished producing detailed curricula for all of its AP courses, we will have arrived at the endpoint no-one openly admits to wanting: a leftist national curriculum. The only way to block this is by creating a competing educational testing company advised by the best traditionalist scholars and capable of authorizing alternative curricula and textbooks. For those dissatisfied with America’s current direction, there is no better way to begin the task of cultural reconstruction than this.

We need an enterprising entrepreneur to challenge the dominance of the College Board.

Brainwashing A 17-Year Old

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Lady Liberty 1885 posted a story today about Tanner Glenn, who is running Richard Nixon’s campaign for the NC General Assembly in Johnston county. Richard Nixon is a history teacher at Corinth High School. Lady Liberty notes that one can view Nixon’s “Planet History” page at Corinth High School here, but Nixon has conveniently moved his lectures linked on that page to a “Google classroom” that only students can access. Tanner Glenn is one of his former students.

The problem here is something called APUSH (Advanced Placement U. S. History), a revised American history course that paints Americans as oppressors, racists, and all sorts of other negative things. Mr. Nixon is a member of the NEA, the NCAE and OAH — one of the groups who heavily influenced the controversial re-write of APUSH.

The Washington Post did a piece on Richard Nixon’s political campaign and his campaign manager on January 11 and stated the following:

Glenn grew up in a Republican family and considered himself a Republican for most of his life; he interned for the North Carolina GOP when he was 16.

Then he took Nixon’s class, he said, and though Glenn never knew his teacher’s political leanings, the experience pushed him to think more deeply about his own political beliefs.

…And in that way, the teacher turned history into a series of stories about real people to whom Glenn could relate. He particularly admired Theodore Roosevelt for his efforts to establish national parks and bust monopolies to force fair competition among businesses.

The summer after taking Nixon’s class, Glenn volunteered for the state Democratic Party, and he found he agreed with the view that government can and should play a significant role in addressing social problems.

He went on to found a Teen Democrats chapter in Johnston County, where he impressed local party leaders, and he has remained involved in party politics as a college student.

It is interesting to note that Glenn learned that “the government can and should play a significant role in addressing social problems.” Did he learn about enumerated powers in his history class? Article 1 Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution limits the powers of Congress. Amendment 10 states “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

This is a very sad example of a student being brainwashed by a charismatic teacher. It is a shame that the teacher did not bother to include the concept of limited government in his lesson plans.

Why APUSH Is Important

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Last year, the College Board, under the leadership of David Coleman, introduced a new APUSH, (Advanced Placement U. S. History) Curriculum Framework. I have previously written about the content of the new APUSH curriculum (rightwinggranny.com). If you would like to see all of the articles, use the search engine at the top of the page. However, in this article I would like to share some quotes from a speech given by Dr. Wilfred M. McClay, G.T. and Libby Blankenship Professor in the History of Liberty at the University of Oklahoma. Dr. McClay spoke on July 10, 2015, at Hillsdale College. The full text of his remarks can be found at the Imprimis section of the Hillsdale College website.

Here are a few excerpts from his speech:

…the chief purpose of a high school education in American history is as a rite of civic membership, an act of inculcation and formation, a way in which the young are introduced to the fullness of their political and cultural inheritance as Americans, enabling them to become literate and conversant in its many features, and to appropriate fully all that it has to offer them, both its privileges and its burdens. To make its stories theirs, and thereby let them come into possession of the common treasure of its cultural life. In that sense, the study of history is different from any other academic subject. It is not merely a body of knowledge. It also ushers the individual person into membership in a common world, and situates them in space and time.

This is especially true in a democracy. The American Founders, and perhaps most notably Thomas Jefferson, well understood that no popular government could flourish for long without an educated citizenry—one that understood the special virtues of republican self-government, and the civic and moral duty of citizens to uphold and guard it. As the historian Donald Kagan has put it, “Democracy requires a patriotic education.” It does so for two reasons: first, because its success depends upon the active participation of its citizens in their own governance; and second, because without such an education, there would be no way to persuade free individuals of the need to make sacrifices for the sake of the greater good.

…The 2014 framework grants far more extensive attention to “how various identities, cultures, and values have been preserved or changed in different contexts of U.S. history, with special attention given to the formation of gender, class, racial, and ethnic identities.” The change is very clear: the new framework represents a shift from national identity to subcultural identities. Indeed, the new framework is so populated with examples of American history as the conflict between social groups, and so inattentive to the sources of national unity and cohesion, that it is hard to see how students will gain any coherent idea of what those sources might be. This does them, and all Americans, an immense disservice. Instead of combating fracture, it embraces it.

If this framework is permitted to take hold, the new version of the test will effectively marginalize traditional ways of teaching about the American past, and force American high schools to teach U.S. history from a perspective that self-consciously seeks to decenter American history. Is this the right way to prepare young people for American citizenship? How can we call forth the acts of sacrifice that our democracy needs, not only on the battlefield but also in our daily lives—the acts of dedication to the common good that are at the heart of civilized life—without training up citizens who know about and appreciate that democracy, care about the common good, and feel themselves a part of their nation’s community of memory? How can we expect our citizens to grapple intelligently with enduring national debates—such as over the role of the U.S. Constitution, or about the reasons for the separation of powers and limited government—if they know nothing of the long trail of those particular debates, and are instead taught to translate them into the one-size-fits-all language of the global and transnational?

Please follow the link above to Imprimis to read the entire speech. Dr. McClay has named one of the causes of the divisions we face today. Because our children have not been taught patriotism (it is out of favor right now and referred to as ‘gringoism’), they lack pride in themselves and in their country. When everyone gets a trophy, we have no one to celebrate. When everyone gets a trophy, no one is exceptional. It is time to start recognizing those who are worthy of trophies and letting those who don’t earn them at first to keep trying until they do. American History should be ‘warts and all,’ but it shouldn’t be all warts. The new APUSH curriculum is mostly warts.