\n\n“First, out of more than 100 units, the governor has identified three or four that may sound sketchy to people unfamiliar with the topic. But the focus on this handful of examples creates a highly selective and distorted view of the curriculum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Second, he describes the class as \u201chistory,\u201d when in fact it is an interdisciplinary curriculum that exposes students to college-level subject matter they almost certainly don\u2019t encounter in standard U.S. and world history classes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Third, and most importantly, the curriculum makes a lot more sense if you consider its topline objective: arming students with a range of analytical and critical thinking skills. If you believe that the purpose of a quality education is to prepare kids to thrive in the real world, the AP African American Studies is a win. The subject matter is rigorous, and the texts and other source material are challenging. Isn\u2019t that exactly what a twenty-first century education should look like?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
…<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“While it is certainly true that Florida students already study some fundamentals of Black history, they are unlikely to learn about African linguistic diversity or how to parse maps of the Songhai Empire in their U.S. or world history courses. They may read excerpts by former enslaved people like Frederick Douglass or Harriet Jacobs, but probably won\u2019t encounter Olaudah Equiano\u2019s captivity narrative, analyze the intersection of European and African art or locate connections between Harlem Renaissance writers like Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes and visual artists like James Van Der Zee and Aaron Douglas. We can fairly intuit that they won\u2019t encounter writing by Black feminists like Nikki Giovanni or parse Molefi Kete Asante\u2019s work on Afrocentricity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is no knock against Florida\u2019s public schools. According to its mission statement, the AP curriculum \u201cenables willing and academically prepared students to pursue college-level studies.\u201d By design, the curriculum operates a level or two above a standard high school program.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
…<\/p>\n\n\n\n
” The first unit, \u201cOrigins of the African Diaspora,\u201d offers a bright tapestry of subjects around African culture, history, linguistics, art and economics, as well as the process behind \u2014 and experience of \u2014 enslavement (including the role of Black Africans in that tragedy). It would require a feat of political gymnastics to find issue with units on \u201cExploring Africa\u2019s Geographic Diversity,\u201d \u201cEthnolinguistic Diversity and Bantu Dispersals\u201d or \u201cVisualizing Early Africa.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The second unit, \u201cFreedom, Enslavement, and Resistance,\u201d is also standard fare, with topics that include \u201cAfrican Explorers in the Americas,\u201d \u201cOrigins and Overview of the Transatlantic Slave Trade,\u201d \u201cFleeing Enslavement\u201d and \u201cBlack Women\u2019s Rights & Education.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And so it goes with the third unit, \u201cThe Practice of Freedom,\u201d which covers such topics as Reconstruction, Jim Crow and the early civil rights movement. Notwithstanding the current vogue for banning literature in schools \u2014 a troubling development that is hardly specific to Florida \u2014 it would take a particularly narrow mind to find fault with modules on \u201cEveryday Life in Literature,\u201d \u201cThe Rise and Fall of Harlem\u201d or \u201cMusic and the Black National Experience.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s unit four, \u201cMovements and Debates,\u201d that opens the door more than just a crack to conservative criticism, though most of the unit continues the curriculum\u2019s chronological arc, exploring subjects like civil rights, the Black Arts Movement, student protests, Black women\u2019s history, music and religion and faith. Nothing particularly out of the ordinary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To be sure, many culture warriors will object to topics and texts that strike most people as unproblematic. Voices like Frantz Fanon, Malcolm X, Ta-Nehisi Coates and bell hooks offend the sensibilities of some white Americans. They push the boundaries of the conversation about race in ways that challenge ideas about \u201cAmerican exceptionalism,\u201d progress and national innocence. Similarly, raw representations of white violence against Black persons, families and institutions \u2014 be they historical texts, paintings, songs or sociological tracts \u2014 make a lot of conservatives uncomfortable. They complain<\/a> that broaching these subjects teaches white children to feel implicated by the actions of earlier generations. This concern assumes that students are especially brittle and incapable of dealing with the subject matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the back half of unit four also contains topics that may cause some parents \u2014 and not just conservatives \u2014 to raise an eyebrow: \u201cIntersectionality and Activism,\u201d \u201cBlack Queer Studies,\u201d \u201c\u2018Postracial\u2019 Racism and Colorblindness,\u201d \u201cIncarceration and Abolition,\u201d \u201cMovements for Black Lives\u201d and \u201cThe Reparations Movement.\u201d These topics drive at extremely polarizing political debates, including what if anything the country owes its Black citizens, whether the criminal justice system is fair and unbiased and the meaning of sexuality. Even outside an AP course, these are fraught topics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One need not agree with DeSantis that the AP course is a study in indoctrination to wonder: Why would you teach these topics to 17-year-olds? Are they not in fact \u2026 \u201cwoke?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The answer to this last question is a resounding: Yes! Also: So what?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n …<\/p>\n\n\n\n “They\u2019re complicated works of sociology and philosophy. They\u2019re highly contested polemics. We read them to sharpen our capacity for analysis and argument. Contra Gov. DeSantis, being assigned a text is not an exercise in indoctrination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How do I know this? Because reading Friedrich Nietzsche in college did not turn me into a nihilist any more than reading Albert Camus made me an existentialist. I read Ross Douthat\u2019s New York Times<\/em> column regularly, and yet I have neither changed my party affiliation to Republican nor converted to Catholicism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We expose students to knotty, complicated and controversial ideas because it helps them sharpen the five critical skill sets that the College Board identified in the course prospectus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If a student takes the AP course on African American Studies and is ultimately able to develop an empirical, well-constructed, knock-down argument against reparations or prison reform, that\u2019s as much of a win as the opposite outcome. I might not like where the student landed, but the curriculum did its job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s the idea behind the AP\u2019s course in African American Studies: use a topic that captures the interest of a large number of students to introduce them to a range of interdisciplinary methodologies and teach them to analyze and make sense of our very complicated world.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n