An African American Studies Course at Ridge View High School in Columbia, South Carolina, which is based on the legacy of W.E.B. Du Bois and Malcolm X
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.
“Since its inception, the development of the AP African American Studies course has been an on-going, iterative process that calls upon the expertise of teachers, professors, and experts who understand the key concepts, themes, and methodologies of African American Studies, and this refining process, which is a part of all AP courses, has operated independently from political pressure,” Patterson said in the release.
In South Carolina, the Confederate battle flag was removed from statehouse grounds in the aftermath of a white supremacist massacre, so it was no small thing to test out the course.
The course is currently being tested at 60 schools around the U.S., and the official framework is meant to encourage the expansion of the course to hundreds of additional high schools in the next academic year. The College Board, which oversees AP courses, said developers consulted with professors from more than 200 colleges, including several historically Black institutions.
“I’m a White person, and I wanted to take this class because I don’t know that much about Black history,” she told CNN. “The course should be in the curriculum. Why wouldn’t we want to look at this history?
“She was a very strong woman – a heroine – and fought on the front lines with her soldiers,” Soderstrom said of Nzinga, celebrated for pushing back against Portuguese colonization and the trade of enslaved people in Central Africa in the 16th and 17th centuries. “But we tend to skip the stories of people from Africa.”
“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. “And my (Black) classmates deserve to hear this history. It’s awesome that Ridge View is a majority-Black school and gets to 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 (she also was my 9th grade English teacher), echoed some of these sentiments.
She told CNN that it was best for children to see themselves reflected in the curriculum and to celebrate their cultures. It’s known that a kid who is valued and safe will do better in school.
Jacynth Tucker, a senior, is intimately familiar with the power of inclusivity. She said that at a previous school, she and other Black students felt invisible.
She told CNN that she can’t remember a time when she explored Africa and talked about the culture. “Being in a class where that’s more of a focus is very special to me.”
She told CNN she liked the activity of the teacher asking, “What do all these people have in common?” Their commonality was that they are 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.”
It’s pretty much impossible to separate the debut of the AP African American Studies pilot course from the Republican-led racial panic looming over many schools.
Legislators in more than a dozen states introduced 137 laws this year banning the discussion of race, US history and gender in schools and higher education according to an August analysis by PEN America. This figure is a 250% increase over 2021.
According to the American Library Association, the number of attempts to censor books in K-12 schools, universities and public libraries will surpass the previous record count. The ALA tallied 681 attempts between January 1 and August 31; the 2021 total was 729.
These attacks are part of a much broader counter-mobilization against the efforts to topple racial and social hierarchies.
“We’re not seeing different 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 as saying that the course isn’t political. We teach factual information and everything is up to date.
The Dallas-Fort Worth High School Principal’s Perspective on Race, Preferences and Discrimination in the U.S. After Floyd’s Death
The pilot course is going to be available to all high schools next year and then all schools the following year, according to the College Board.
She noted that she was excited to see what was next, like she had been as a high school student nearly two decades ago.
James Whitfield was the first African American to be named principal of a mostly white high school in the Dallas-Fort Worth suburb in the spring of 2020.
When students returned in the fall, they were anticipating big challenges. The teaching shortage was already bad, and it would get worse with the Pandemic.
In the days after Floyd’s death, Whitfield couldn’t sleep and used an email to set down his thoughts. He wondered what could be done to stop systemic racism.
“I got positive responses from everyone in the community, parents, family members, and staff members,” says Whitfield. In the months that followed, though, pressure on him mounted as internet chatter began to heat up among those he calls “[conservative] operatives here in Texas that are trying to take over school boards.” There were some aspersions cast on his marriage.
There were a variety of new laws introduced across the country that altered public education. Critical race theory is an academic framework that suggests people who are white have benefited from racism in the U.S. Other laws are aimed at prohibiting classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity.
Teachers and Administrators are Under Pressure: After Greg Abbott’s CRT Law, Superintendent Lindsay Marshall, Reveals a Politically Motivated Superintendent for K-12 Public Schools
In some places the teachers and administrators are under increased pressure because they’re already facing long hours and low pay. It all comes as many schools are losing qualified teachers and waging an uphill battle to improve flagging test scores.
A year after his email and weeks after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed a law banning CRT in K-12 public school classrooms, Whitfield was accused at a school board meeting of promoting the concept. The board voted not to extend his contract after he denied the charge. In the meantime, Whitfield is on paid administrative leave.
The district referred NPR to a statement that says, “the District and Dr. Whitfield each believe they are in the right.”
Many schools struggle to hold on to teachers and staff because of the growing divisiveness in the classroom. One recent study estimates there are more than 36,500 teacher vacancies across the country and more than 163,500 teachers are either not fully certified or not certified in the subject they are teaching. Those figures are conservative, because data from more than a dozen states could not be collected, according to the study. Meanwhile, a report released last month by the Government Accountability Office says “[negative] perception of the teaching profession and perceived lack of support for current teachers” are “among key recruitment and retention challenges.”
Further, in a survey published by the Rand Corp. earlier this year, more than a third of teachers and 60% of principals reported being harassed during the 2021-2022 school year “because of their school’s policies on COVID-19 safety measures or for teaching about race, racism, or bias.”
Lindsay Marshall, a history professor at the University of Oklahoma, says that the situation affects students too.
“It was very clear to me in the classroom that I was not only engaging with my students, I was engaging with their whole world,” Marshall says. She says politics breaks down a relationship between teachers, students and parents.
“The law is clear, and simple: educators are prohibited from instructing students on matters of gender identity or sexuality in grades K-3,” DeSantis spokesman Bryan Griffin wrote in statement to NPR. “Florida’s education will be focused on the fundamentals: reading, writing, math, civics, and other core subjects – not politically motivated indoctrination.”
Michael Woods is a special education teacher with nearly three decades of experience at Santaluces Community High School in Palm Beach County. Outside of school, he makes no secret of being an LGBTQ activist and has helped organize local Pride events. He says that he doesn’t discuss it with kids.
Woods says he doesn’t understand the charge by some parents and politicians that teachers are trying to “indoctrinate” students into some sort of liberal ideology. “If I could indoctrinate kids to do something, it would be to bring a pencil to class and to do their homework,” he says jokingly.
“If they are found in violation, the revocation of the certificate could be done without any safeguards we’ve had for decades and decades that were guaranteed by law,” Woods says.
But the issue can cut both ways. Some educators went public on their way out the door in protest of their school’s sensitivity to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Native American (LBGI) community.
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Among them is Frank McCormick, who taught history for 11 years in a Waukegan, Ill., high school before calling it quits midway through the 2021-2022 academic year.
He says he “started off pretty progressive, politically,” but that he gradually became disillusioned after witnessing what he describes as a “very dysfunctional, very toxic” environment at the school.
The teacher says he witnessed an ever bolder liberal ideological agenda among administrators after the 2016 election. Last year, he went public with his concerns at a local school board meeting, excoriating the superintendent as “a member of a bureaucratic class of charlatans and frauds, enriching herself at the expense of an impoverished community while students suffer.”
McCormick resigned in January, just a few months after Tony Kinnett, a now-former STEM coordinator and head instructional coach for the Indianapolis Public Schools, posted similar criticisms of his school in a video on Twitter.
Kinnett, who previously worked on education policy in former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s office, said he was fed up with endless meetings about diversity and equity trying to decide “who was more oppressed.”
“When schools tell you that we aren’t teaching critical race theory, it means one thing: Go away and look into our affairs no further,” he says in the video. Race essentialism is painted to appear like the district cares about students of color, that is not transparency, cultural relevance or anything else.
Kinnett has appeared on the air of Fox News and is a regular contributor to National Review. The website Chalkboard Review was started by him, and he says it promotes diverse perspectives in education.
Matthew had been at Sullivan Central High School in northeast Tennessee for 16 years and he lost his job because of the debate over critical race theory.
During a discussion in his contemporary issues class about Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager armed with an AR-15 rifle who shot and killed two people and wounded a third at a Black Lives Matter protest in Kenosha, Wis., Hawn “made the statement that white privilege is a fact,” he says.
At the time, the school — which has since become a middle school as part of a consolidation — was in the midst of hybrid learning due to COVID-19. An angry parent sent an emails to the school officials when it was learned that a video of a discussion was uploaded to the wrong class. He immediately took down the video.
Hawn was sick over what happened but he was not sure how he would teach modern issues in a time of such a huge divide.
Months later, when the topic of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol came up in Hawn’s contemporary issues class, Hawn assigned an essay from The Atlantic by Ta-Nehisi Coates titled “The First White President,” a critique of the presidency of Donald Trump as, among other things, “the negation of Barack Obama’s legacy.”
In Florida, Alexander Ingram, who has taught civics, advanced placement government, African American studies and the history of the Vietnam War for the Duval County Public Schools in Jacksonville, Fla., for about nine years, says he enjoys those courses precisely because they are both controversial and intellectually stimulating for students.
Some students realized that the violence at the Capitol was not protected speech. Others brought up the issue pushed by then-President Donald Trump that the 2020 election was stolen. Generally speaking though, “kids are a lot better about talking about politics than adults,” he says.
“I’ve heard of the things about teachers,” he says. When he once defended LGBTQ students, he was publicly berated by members of the community as a “pedophile and a groomer.”
Since Florida’s Parental Rights in Education law went into effect, Ingram says he’s “very aware of what the punishment can be right now, which is me losing my certification as well as the civil case against me.”
An Update on DeSantis’ “Stop WOKE” Law: Education, Black Lives, and the Education of a New College of Florida
“On the one hand, I feel like this job is more important than it’s ever been,” he says. It wouldn’t be right for me to say I’m content here.
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 opposing the “Stop WOKE” law.
The proposal is a top priority for DeSantis’ higher education agenda this year, which also includes giving politically appointed presidents and university boards of trustees more power over hiring and firing at universities and urging schools to focus their missions on Florida’s future workforce needs. In the past month, his standing among conservatives has increased, thanks to his stances on hot-button cultural and education issues.
Multicultural programs are intended to encourage students of all races and background to feel accepted and at home in a campus setting. The state’s flagship school, the University of Florida, has a “Chief Diversity Officer,” a “Center for Inclusion and Multicultural Engagement” and an “Office for Accessibility and Gender Equity.”
Tuesday’s announcement was foreshadowed in December when the governor’s office asked all state universities to account for all of their spending on programs and initiatives related to diversity, equity and inclusion or critical race theory.
A 15-minute drive from New College of Florida, a public liberal arts college where a board of directors was installed with a mandate to remake the school into his conservative vision for higher education, is where DeSantis has announced his higher education agenda. DeSantis said his budget will include $15 million to restructure New College and hire faculty.
Eddie Speir, one of the new board members, stated online that he planned to propose in the meeting toterminate all of the contracts of the faculty, staff and administration and immediately rehir them.
The Florida Department of Education’s multiDisciplinary course on African American Studies (ARACUS) was not authorized in the Florida high schools
In the last year or so, the multiDisciplinary course has been praised by academics and historians, all while being a target for lawmakers aiming to limit how topics like racism and history are taught in public schools.
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 units include other topics, such as the responses of African American writers and activists to racism and anti-Black violence, the founding of historically Black colleges and universities, Black Caribbean migration to the United States, segregation in the 20th century, redlining and the civil rights movement.
The course framework, which was completed in December, consisted of more than 300 professors of African American studies, as well as faculty from dozens of HBCUs.
Unlike the pilot version, the official framework only requires the analysis of historical, literary, and artistic works, doesn’t have a required list of secondary sources, and adds a research project that counts as part of the AP exam score.
The College Board had asked the Florida Department of Education if they could include the course in their high schools, but the department said it wasn’t allowed in the state.
The state’s education department previously told CNN that it had concerns about some topics of study included in an 81-page document that appears to be a preview of the course framework. 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 the case for remunerating the Black Lives Matter. None of the authors listed by Florida education officials are included in the final framework’s required readings.
The reparations debate, “gay life and expression in Black communities,” and Black Lives Matter are only included in a list of examples of the topics that students can pick for research projects.
“These topics are not a required part of the course framework that is formally adopted by states and that defines the exam. This list is a partial one for illustrative purposes and can be refined by states and districts,” the College Board said in the framework.
There is a Louisiana town called Baton Rouge. The new Advanced Placement course on African American studies was criticized by conservatives including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who threatened to ban the class in his state.
The College Board has been taking input also from teachers running the pilot classes as the draft curriculum has gone through several revisions over the last year.
Black History Month: The Rise and Fall of a Nation on a Black Man’s Footprint: A Memorino from Emmitt Glynn
The executive director of the National Black Justice Coalition was angry that he woke 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, queer, and non-binary/non-conforming people matter and should not be diminished or erased.”
The course is popular with students in the schools where it has been introduced. The number of people interested in the classes at Baton RougeMagnetHigh School in Louisiana made Emmitt Glynn change his plan and teach it to two classes.
Earlier this week, his students read selections of “The Wretched of the Earth” by Frantz Fanon, which deals with the violence inherent in colonial societies. In a lively discussion, students connected the text to what they had learned about the conflict between colonizers and Native Americans, to the war in Ukraine and to police violence in Memphis, Tennessee.
“We’ve been covering a lot of ground, from the shores of Africa to here in the 1930s, and we will keep on going through history,” he said. He said he was proud to see the connections his students were making between the past and now.
The class helped fill some of the gaps that have been taught to her. She realized how little is said in other classes after taking this class.
The College Board offers a wide range of AP courses including math, science, social studies, foreign languages and fine arts. The courses are optional. Taught at a college level, students who score high enough on the final exam usually earn 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.
Light bulbs go off, I have seen that, when I give 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 not just learning history, but we’re making history.”