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"There's no such thing as the Gettysburg Address." ...and other astounding news!
The following from: National Review
By
Stanley Kurtz
"Texans need to wake up ..."
Americans
are only just now waking up to a quiet but devastatingly effective effort to replace
the teaching of traditional American history in our high schools with a new,
centrally-controlled, and sharply left-leaning curriculum.
The
College Board, the company that issues the SAT and the various Advanced
Placement (AP) exams, has created an elaborate new framework for the AP U.S.
History Exam that will effectively force nearly all American high schools,
public and private, to transform the way they teach U.S. History.
The
traditional emphasis on America’s founders and the principles of constitutional
government will soon be jettisoned in favor of a left-leaning emphasis on race,
gender, class, ethnicity, etc.
There
are serious questions about the legality of the new AP U.S. History Exam,
insofar as it may conflict with existing history standards in a number of
states. These questions, however, as well as public debate over this massive
and tremendously controversial change, have been largely suppressed by the
stealthy way in which the College Board has rolled out the new test.
The
new AP U.S. History Exam has been issued under the authority of David Coleman,
president of the College Board and, not coincidentally, architect of the Common
Core. We are witnessing a coordinated, two-pronged effort to effectively
federalize all of American K-12 education, while shifting its content sharply
to the left.
While
the College Board has publicly released a lengthy “framework” for the new AP
U.S. History Exam, that framework contains only a few sample questions. Sources
tell me, however, that a complete sample exam has be released, although only to
certified AP U.S. History teachers. Those teachers have been warned, under
penalty of law and the stripping of their AP teaching privileges, not to
disclose the content of the new sample AP U.S. History Exam to anyone.
This
is clearly an effort to silence public debate over these heavily politicized
and illegitimately nationalized standards. If the complete sample test was
available, the political nature of the new test would become evident. Public
scrutiny of the sample test would also expose potential conflicts between the
new exam and existing state standards. This is why the College Board has kept
the test secret and threatened officially certified AP U.S. History teachers
with severe penalties for revealing the test.
The
College Board claims that its highly directive new framework for AP U.S.
History is actually adaptable to the preferences of particular states, school
districts, and teachers. This is deeply misleading. It is true that the new
history framework allows teachers to include examples of their choice. Yet the
framework also insists that the examples must be used to illustrate the themes
and concepts behind the official College Board vision.
The
upshot is that James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and the other founders are
largely left out of the new test, unless they are presented as examples of
conflict and identity by class, gender, race, ethnicity, etc. The Constitution
can be studied as an example of the Colonists’ belief in the superiority of
their own culture, for instance. But any teacher who presents a full unit on
the principles of the American Constitution taught in the traditional way would
be severely disadvantaging his students. So while allowing some minor
flexibility on details, the new AP U.S. History framework effectively forces
teachers to train their students in a leftist, blame-America-first reading of
history, while omitting traditional treatments of our founding principles.
Texas
is at the forefront of the resistance to the new AP U.S. History Exam, but the
battle is not going well. Ken Mercer, a member of the Texas School Board, is
attempting to introduce a resolution rebuking and rejecting the new AP U.S.
History Exam. Unfortunately, he is now being told that he must wait to
introduce the resolution until September, when it will be too late.
Texas
makes up about 10 percent of the College Board’s market. Were Texas to reject
the new AP U.S. History Exam, the entire project could be put into doubt. It is
imperative that Ken Mercer be allowed to introduce his resolution.
Texans
need to wake up and demand that Mercer’s resolution be introduced and passed as
soon as possible. The rest of the country needs to wake up and demand similar
action in every state.
The
public should also insist that the College Board release its heretofore secret
sample AP U.S. History test for public scrutiny and debate. There is no excuse
for withholding this test from the public.
Just
as the Common Core became an established fact before most American parents,
lawmakers, and school districts even knew it existed, the new AP U.S. History
Exam is about to entrench a controversial and highly politicized national
school curriculum without proper notice or debate. George Washington, Thomas
Jefferson, and a full understanding of our founding principles are on the way
out. Race, gender, class, and ethnicity are coming in, all in secrecy and in
clear violation of the Constitution’s guarantee that education remain in
control of the states.
The
time to oppose the new AP U.S. History Exam is now.
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