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World History Begins in 1200 AD
I happened upon the changes being made to the high school level AP World History course beginning this fall. AP classes are a College Board scam (in my opinion) where students are led to believe they will earn college credit if they take this course in high school, and pass the test at a certain level (for which there is a fee). Not all colleges will accept this credit, but that information is not widely disseminated.
At any rate, the AP World History class, rather than starting in the Paleolithic era as in previous years, now begins at 1200 AD (they use CE, but I do not). Apparently, the development of societies, trade, etc., before 1200 is not pertinent to what happened afterward. I skimmed through the class guide, here is a PDF link if you are interested.
The first unit is The Global Tapestry, which begins with Asia, Dar al-Islam, South and Southeast Asia, State Building in the Americas, State Building in Africa, and then, developments in Europe (which alone of the geographic areas has a focus on coerced labor and serfdom – because of course it was only in Europe where slavery existed).
I’m not going to go through the entire course here, but the topics in the next unit, Network of Exchanges, is interesting as well: The Silk Roads, The Mongol Empire and the Making of the Modern World, Exchange in the Indian Ocean, Trans-Saharan Trade Routes, and Cultural and Environmental Consequences of Connectivity. (Ya figure they will cover cultural appropriation?)
This is how it’s done: Pretend that nothing of consequence happened before an arbitrary date (Egyptians? Greeks? Romans? The beginnings of Christianity?), then pretend that Western Civilization is not worth study. We shouldn’t wonder why our “best and brightest” do not know the significance of a thorough knowledge of history.
According to a 2017 press release from the College Board, 2.7 million students were expected to take 4.9 million AP exams that year (across 38 subjects).
These AP classes are a big deal in high schools, pushed by counselors, and can often affect grade point averages when weighted according to the rigor of the class. You are not considered to be a serious student if you do not take AP courses. One would have to homeschool or try to find something outside the public school system that has not bought into the College Board propaganda. Frankly, those options may simply not be available to everyone who would like to get their kids out of public schools.
Unfortunately, we must expect that the majority of our future college graduates in politics, law, etc. – the ones who will be running the country – will be steeped in this muck. I find it to be a very depressing outlook.
Published in Education
My history classes seldom made it much past WWI. It seems we spent an inordinate amount of time on the evils of America in the late 19th Century: segregation, the rise of the KKK, the Robber Barons, child labor, yellow journalism, the rise of Imperialism, ad nauseam…
A pretty lousy way to treat Chinese civilization, leaving out Confucius.
I seem to recall most of those guys being great, and wondering why we were supposed to dislike them.
I was born in ’51.
He was a old white male.
I guess that makes you prehistoric.
The guys at work think so.