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The framework for African American studies is released by the College Board.

NY Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/31/opinion/ron-desantis-black-history.html

The South Carolina AP African American Studies Course Opens on Wednesday, March 17 at the College Board of Statehouse Grounds in Fredericksburg, South Carolina

In the early 2000s, when I was a student at Ridge View High School, in Columbia, South Carolina, I loved to parse the legacies of certain historical figures: W.E.B. Du Bois, in AP US History; Malcolm X, in AP English Language and Composition.

High schools had been hungry for an AP African American Studies course for years. The College Board asked universities if they’d give credit for a corresponding exam, but they said no.

The state of South Carolina did not remove the Confederate battle flag from statehouse grounds until after a White supremacist massacre and it is no small thing to test out the course there.

The framework of the African American Studies Advanced Placement course was released Wednesday by the College Board, but Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis denounced that it was being used for a political agenda.

“I hope that the course will be offered to other people who look like me and to other people who just want to learn about history that’s been covered up and history that’s been ignored,” she said. “And I hope that the course makes room for more conversation. Lots of people are scared to talk about race, but with more conversation comes better understanding.”

The first part of the course is about early African kingdoms and some of their figures, like Queen Nzinga of Ndongo, which is in present-day Nigeria.

Race, Gender and Sexuality in K-12 Schools, Universities, and Public Libraries: A Report from Ridge View High School Senior Jacynth Tucker

“It matters that we get to learn all these things as a society. We don’t ever really get to hear about any of these figures or what they went through,” she said. Black classmates need to hear this history. Ridge View is a majority-Black school and it will help create this course.

Her mother, Nicole Walker, who was involved in bringing the pilot course to Ridge View and is the director of the school’s Scholars Academy Magnet for Business and Law, spoke about some of these feelings.

“We know that what’s best for kids is for them to see themselves reflected in the curriculum, for them to celebrate their cultures, for them to feel valued,” she told CNN. A kid who feels valued and safe will do better in school.

The power of inclusivity is something that is familiar to senior Jacynth Tucker. Black students felt invisible at a previous school, according to her.

When she was younger, she told CNN that she could not recall a time when she and her friends talked about the culture of Africa. Being in a class where that is more of a focus is very special to me.

She told CNN that one activity she liked the most was when the teacher asked her what people had in common. “Their commonality was that they’re all Black. But the point of that discussion was that, yes, they’re all Black, but there’s so much diversity within the Black community, within my community: diverse religions, gender expressions, sexualities, things like that.”

Weingarten said politics interfered with education and that was what DeSantis tried to do. “Despite this rewrite, we maintain our conviction that AP African American Studies should be available to every high school student nationwide.”

According to an August analysis by PEN America, a literary and free expression organization, legislators in 36 states have introduced 137 laws this year restricting discussions about race, US history and gender in K-12 schools and higher education. This figure is a 250% increase over 2021.

And last month, the American Library Association predicted that the number of attempts this year to censor books in K-12 schools, universities and public libraries grappling with race, gender and sexuality will exceed 2021’s record count. The ALA tallied 681 attempts between January 1 and August 31; the 2021 total was 729.

The aim of these attacks is to determine what content is legitimate and what isn’t in an academic context.

We are not seeing any political conflicts. We’re seeing one big political conflict – one big reactionary political project,” as Thomas Zimmer, a visiting professor at Georgetown University, where his research focuses on the history of democracy and its discontents, told CNN in July.

“Henry Louis Gates Jr. is one of the senior minds when we’re talking about American studies and African American history. He was quoted recently explaining that the course isn’t political,” Soderstrom said. Everything we teach is factual and reliable.

“Stop WOKE” laws: A course framework for African American studies in public universities, which was approved by the Florida Board of Governors

The College Board says the pilot course will include additional high schools next year and then be made available to all interested schools the following year.

I remembered the same fundamental curiosity I had in high school, and I was excited to see what was next.

Under Gov. Ron DeSantis’s “Stop WOKE” law — which would limit students and teachers from learning and talking about issues related to race and gender — Florida is at the forefront of a nationwide campaign to silence Black voices and erase the full and accurate history and contemporary experiences of Black people. The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc., the American Civil Liberties Union, the A.C.L.U. of Florida and Ballard Spahr filed a lawsuit on behalf of university professors and a college student opposing the “Stop WOKE” law and, along with a second lawsuit, won a preliminary injunction blocking Florida’s Board of Governors from enforcing its unconstitutional and racially discriminatory provisions at public universities.

The multidisciplinary course was praised by academics in recent months as a way to teach about race in schools and became a target for legislators who wanted to restrict how historical topics are taught.

Gov. DeSantis told reporters last week the decision was made because it included the study of “queer theory” and political movements that advocated for “abolishing prisons.”

The African American studies course is divided into four units: origins of the African diaspora; freedom, enslavement and resistance; the practice of freedom; and movements and debates.

The four major topics are: African diaspora, freedom, enslavement and resistance, and practice of freedom.

More than 300 professors of African American studies, including faculty from dozens of HBCUs, were consulted during the development of the course framework, which was completed in December, the organization said.

The official framework of the College Board does not include a list of secondary sources and it only requires the analysis of historical, literary and artistic works.

The Department of Education wrote to the College Board stating that the course would not be accepted in Florida high schools, as it was “inexplicably” contrary to Florida law.

Some topics of study, which appear in an 81-page document and appear to be a preview of the course framework, were raised by the state’s education department. The document, dated February 2022, was shared with CNN last month by DeSantis spokesperson Bryan Griffin.

The official course framework released on Wednesday did not include any information regarding Black Lives Matter, the Movement of Black Lives or the case for reparations. None of the authors listed as concerning by Florida education officials are included in the required readings of the final framework.

There are some topics that students can pick up on for a research project, but only the discussion of the reparations debate and gay life and expression in Black communities are included.

“These topics are not a required part of the course framework that is formally adopted by states and that defines the exam. The framework said that the list is a partial one and can be refined by states and districts.

The College Board denied the claims in the New York Times that it had removed all mention of Black feminism or the “gay experience” from its curriculum, or that some of the revisions were made to appease the administration.

The College Board is taking input from the teachers who run the pilot classes as the draft curriculum has changed over the last year.

Emmitt Glynn and the Black History Month Black Hole Students at the Louisiana High School. A Keynote Address to the College Board

It was “infuriated” to wake up on the first day of Black History month to news of white men in positions of privilege horse trading essential and inextricably linked parts of American history. The lives, contributions and stories of black trans and queer people are important and should not be erased.

The course has been popular among students in schools where it has been introduced. At Baton Rouge Magnet High School in Louisiana, so many students were interested that Emmitt Glynn is teaching it to two classes, instead of just the one he was originally planning.

His students read selections from “The Wretched of the Earth” by Frantz Fanon, which deals with violence in colonial societies. In a discussion about the conflict between colonizers and Native Americans, students compared the text to what they had learned about the war in Ukraine, police violence in Memphis, Tennessee and other things.

“We’ve been covering the gamut from the shores of Africa to where we are now in the 1930s, and we will continue on through history,” Glynn said. He said he was proud to see the connections his students were making between the past and now.

Taking the class helped fill some of the gaps she had been taught. “Taking this class,” she said, “I realized how much is not said in other classes.”

The College Board offers AP courses in math, science, social studies, foreign languages and fine arts. The courses can be taken with or without the courses. Students who score high on the final exam can usually get course credit at their university.

In a written statement Wednesday, College Board CEO David Coleman said the course is “an unflinching encounter with the facts and evidence of African American history and culture.”

In Malcolm Reed’s classroom at St. Amant High School in Louisiana, where he teaches the AP class, he tries to be mindful of how the material and discussions can affect students.

I have seen light bulbs go off when I have given them the information. I ask them, ‘How does it affect you? How do you feel about learning this?’ ” he said. “It’s also new for me, and I’m just taking it in stride. We’re making history because we’re learning history.

Black Women and Movements in the 20th Century: The final curriculum of American Ethnic Studies in the Higher Collegiate High School, Washington D.C. Crenshaw

Professor Crenshaw’s name does not appear in the final framework. She is also a key thinker in the field of critical race theory, which posits that racism is embedded in the structure of the American legal system. It is not a term that is taught outside of universities, but it has become a point of contention for many conservatives who object to K-12) schools emphasizing racism and other forms of discrimination.

Bringing graduate-level concepts into high schools can prove politically dicey even in progressive contexts. African Americans, Latino, Asian Americans and Native Americans are considered part of university ethnic studies departments and were the focus of the draft ethnic studies curriculum. The state chose to revise the document.

A unit on “The Black Feminist Movement and Womanism,” which previously highlighted intersectionality, has been renamed “Black Women and Movements in the 20th Century.” The term “intersectionality” was no longer used but a similar concept remains under the title of Overlapping of Black Life. The new framework discusses Gwendolyn Brooks and Mari Evans as writers whose work explored gender and class alongside race. And the Combahee River Collective, a key Black second-wave feminist group, remains in the framework.

Still, groundbreaking Black female writers and leftist activists such as bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Angela Davis and Alice Walker, who were included in the 2022 draft, have since been excised.

Mr. Packer of the College Board noted that the work of less controversial African American Studies scholars, such as Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham and Henry Louis Gates Jr., had also been left out of the final framework, because of the decision to move the course away from prescribing present-day secondary sources.

Haynie said in the statement issued by the College Board that they deny any claims that their work makes students conform to political pressures.

Though the nonprofit maintains it did not “purge” the curriculum of key lessons concerning “Black feminism” and “gay Black Americans,” it also acknowledged a reduction in the “breadth” of the new framework.

With these revisions, works by scholars including Roderick Ferguson, a professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Yale University, are now removed from the curriculum entirely.

“This ‘culture war’ targeting intellectuals, artists, and academics has a long, distressing history,” Ferguson wrote in an op-ed in the Chronicle of Higher Education, connecting the Florida criticism to his removal before the revisions were made public.

Lawmakers and civil rights organizations criticized the state’s rejection of the AP course. The students said they would file a lawsuit against the governor if it wasn’t changed. African American history professors signed an open letter condemning the changes.

The College Board would be releasing the framework for the course in February. When contacted for comment after that announcement, the organization did not confirm whether Florida’s rejection of the course would play a role in its revisions.

At the beginning of the school year, Marlon Williams-Clark shared his excitement with NPR over teaching the original version of the course as part of the pilot program. Williams-Clark would be teaching the class at a high school in Tallahassee, the capital of Florida.

I’m not talking about things, but how I can talk about them (and why I’ll have to do that one day). “Measurement of the reality with a supercomputer” [J. Mag.

He told NPR there may be a thin line between talking about things and how we approach them. I can’t be the one to have a conversation.

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