On the first day of Black History Month, the College Board sent to us a revised curriculum for their Advanced Placement African American Studies course, weeks after Florida governor and likely 2024 presidential candidate Ron DeSantis (R) said that it “lacks educational value.”
College Board Strips Down African American Studies Course After DeSantis Loudly Rejects It
Hint to the College Board: you will never satisfy his requirements, which will move further and further into whackoland with each iteration. But each time you alter the course in an attempt to satisfy him, you give him more political fodder for a grandstanding rejection.
Just make the course suitable for the other 49 states, and start using the phrase “Florida Student”, with an asterisk on their resume.
It’s been awhile since I took an AP course, but my understanding is while there are course guidelines that include material on the test, teachers are free to improvise and add their own material. So while some of that content may have been removed from the official curriculum, nothing prohibits a teacher from covering it anyway.
Now that I think of it, I took a number of classes that satisfied both AP and IB requirements and we were allowed to take either exam. Which certainly implies that the curriculum guidelines are just that: guidelines.
Tl;dr: this isn’t as doomsday as it sounds.
And DeSantis releases a statement saying the revised course is still to educational for Florida in 3…2…1…
Watch for the Boomerang. Maybe this is what some young folks need to see that DeSantis and his crew are using people’s self esteem for a POTUS run.
Oh, it’s never too early to invoke this, but this is a very good reminder that the ones who immediately started expelling Jewish faculty members and yes, led the way of book burnings, were…universities.
The idea that any of these sonsofbitches have any cojones is a myth. They fold like any federal or state agency does when commanded to do so.
Seems like he did his own research!
As one wag put it, Florida under DeSantis is like 1930s Germany—but with theme parks.
The party that brought you “sex with demons”, “alien sperm” and horse de-wormer in response to COVID doesn’t just have a problem with Black history or “queer theory”.
While the GOP’s attack on African Studies clearly displays their re-discovered comfort with open and unvarnished racism (Lester Maddox’s corpse is smiling rotted ear to rotted ear), it’s also a stalking horse for their utter contempt of education in general.
Education, science, and learning – in all their forms – are direct threats to the pink, male, neofascist wet dream this Florida thug and his billionaire bully-boy backers so desperately want. Questioning will not be allowed in their imagined New American Order.
Selectively attacking curricula – together with slandering teachers as corrupt deviants – is another opening salvo in their fevered dreams of replacing public education with a Ministry-of-Faith-like regime.
Screw them.
It’s still Florida, and the FL Dept of Ed has direct orders from DeSantis what can and can’t not be taught.
And I agree with @occamscoin the College Board futzing with the requirements will never satisfy DeSantis, so why dumb down the requirements for all.
For a RW GOP governor, this sort of performance art is preferable to actually governing their state in the best interests of its citizens.
De Santis is turning his tenure as governor into one long-running “dog whistle” advertisement for his presidential campaign.
“We believe in teaching kids facts and how to think, but we don’t believe they should have an agenda imposed on them,” DeSantis said at a Jan. 23 press conference.
Methinks he clearly has an agenda …
“When you try to use Black history to shoehorn in queer theory, you are clearly trying to use that for political purposes.”
… which is arguably driven by both phantasm and fascism.
Yes, and what he and the Republican majority legislature were expected to do last year was address the skyrocketing property insurance rate crisis, and not just throw out bleeding chunks of red meat to their feral base.
“Florida Man designs curriculum” …
…what could possibly go wrong?
I don’t care about Florida. And don’t forget, the College Board isn’t even piloting the course in the state. So I’m not sure I agree with the analysis that this change was influenced by the racist grandstanding.
Point remains that the requirements aren’t hard and fast with an AP course. And that’s a good thing because it allows teachers to improvise with high-achieving students.
Thinking back, there was always a week in most of my AP courses where the teacher would throw a bunch of random stuff at us to learn before the exam. I thought this was because we ran out of time (our hs went late and the exam happened like a month before the term ended) but maybe it’s because they spent too much time improvising. Which honestly I preferred I guess.
“My decision as governor of Florida that the ideas and experiences of Black, queer, and trans-Americans are political and therefore completely lacking in educational value is completely non-political. There is not the slightest bit of politics in my use of the full powers of the governor’s office to ensure that these horrible, America-hating people are erased from the educational curriculum of Florida students. By the way I’m running for President.”
I’m sorry, but that’s just not believable to be a quote from DeSantis. It’s too nuanced and lacks the appropriate ham-handedness of a true statement of his.
I love it when you go serious.
Gaah! Back to work on my DeSantis impression!
