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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
(sigh)
No ancient Greeks, no Senate and the People of Rome, no Mediterranean-spanning Phoenician trade network, no origins of the Silk Road … aw nuts, who am I fooling … the kids already don’t know when the War of 1812 was fought.
Garbage in, garbage out.
When I read the title of the post I thought to myself, “1200AD, The High Middle Ages, The Age of Christendom. That seems like an unusual time for an organization like the AP (which undoubtedly has an ax to grind) to start with.” Then I read later in the post:
Oh, now that’s the angle. Just pretend that nothing of any importance whatsoever ever happened in Europe in the 1200s.
The problem with World History is that it is so vast a subject that it’s impossible to thoroughly cover in a short-term period like a highschool course. A bad actor with propagandistic aims can just cherry-pick whatever topics best fit their goals and leave students with a skewed and unnuanced impression of world events.
Heh. I see what you did there.
. . .
All this reminds me of something that happened last semester. I was grading an architectural-history paper, and one of its sentences said something like, “Supreme Court Justice John Marshall built this house after he fought in the Civil War.”
Apparently, the student knew that a John Marshall had built the house, so she googled the name, assumed that the first Wikipedia entry belonged to her John Marshall, and continued on with the paper.
Critical thinking skills at work.
Oh my!
I scanned through the linked synopsis and find the course labeled: AP History Modern, the implication being there is some other piece of AP History out there. That would be something like: AP History Classical, and it clearly should be a prerequisite to this course.
Is there such a course? The post is written to sound as if the answer is no.
I remember taking the Modern European History AP in high school, and the astounding depth of the questions. You really had to pull out the stops to get through it. Same with the US History one.
World History, though, I’ve always found troubling as a subject. One of history profs in college always called it “a motorcycle ride through a museum”.
I remember teaching the subject to 7th graders too, and it was even more of a blitz. Just a series of disconnected snapshots and compressed half truths, without any real explanation of why any of it mattered or how it was connected.
Not to defend the AP change per se, but one has to start somewhere I suppose, and 1200 is as arbitrary as any other date. You could start in 1200 BC, and you’d still be losing context, with the added burden of having only 9 months to race through 3200 years of history everywhere in the world. That’s 355 years a month to cover, which is thin. Alternatively, if you just took each month to single out a major civilization worth studying (India, China, the Med, etc – let’s be honest, there would be huge fights over any exclusions), you’d be covering 160 years each 45 minute class period, per region. Moving your start date forward 2400 years lets you cover more detail in each for more recent history, but obviously at the expense of missing the foundations.
In short, most world history classes are of limited use in the first place, and always woefully incomplete.
Apparently not.
If you’re a moderately bright public-school student, and you want to learn about ancient history, you’re out of luck.
I was going to say, I only can think of Justice Marshall, then I looked at the dates involved.
Good Grief!
OK. No AP course for classical history. That does not say that the standard normal education curriculum in America should not include classical history, which would include biblical, Greek, Roman, and European Middle Ages, at a minimum.
Juliana,
In the 9th century, Islam went down the east coast of Africa conquering the ports. They set up the greatest slave trade in history. Islam has always been retrograde in its ability to produce agricultural goods and to participate in normal trade. They have been the greatest slave traders in history. Unable to produce goods on their own they also tend towards piracy. Much of their activity in the Mediterranean was, from the beginning, piracy. For a brief period during the Ottoman’s rise 14th, 15th, & 16th century they developed a large fleet that dominated the eastern Mediterranean and began to threaten the western Mediterranean. Their fleet was defeated by a Christian fleet at the Battle of Le Panto in 1571. After that, the Ottoman’s reverted to their normal piracy tactics and never challenged the Christian fleet again.
The Christians were always slow learners when it came to the slave trade. Islam had the real slave trade & pirate fleet. The two activities piracy & slavery seemed to go well together. They still are at it today.
Regards,
Jim
Assuming my experience is any indication, most don’t.
I graduated from a middling suburban high school in 2014. During my 13 long years in the
gulagpublic school system, I had only one opportunity (as far as I can remember) to learn about ancient history — A.P. World History.(Ultimately, I chose A.P. European History instead, but I later made amends by attending Hillsdale College.)
I checked with the general world history teacher in our school – he said they start with human migration and agricultural development, then generally go back to 500BC in each region.
As a history major, I know any overview can be hit and miss, you don’t learn context and background if you just start in the middle.
I am wondering if you are responding to my comment about European slavery – I was being sarcastic.
Juliana,
I wasn’t being sarcastic at all. However, the primary function of Historians is to “periodize”. When they choose to cut things off at a particular time you can be very sure they did it for a reason. In the case of the new wonderwoke the reason is always the same. They intend to defame Western Civilization. What they reveal is often less important than what they conceal. The true nature of Islam is something they surely don’t want to deal with thus concealment is the easiest solution for them.
Regards,
Jim
And what happens to The Ten Commandments?
I should note, I have a daughter named Juliana.
It’s called a “survey of Western Civilization” at my alma mater.
It’s a basic intro to Western Civ, not an in depth study of the material. Basic knowledge for the liberal arts student.
Same with US history.
If you want in depth, you get into the 200+level courses (where I did Ancient/Classical History and History of England part 1)
My US History AP exam made it possible for me to get two majors and a minor in 4 years, without needing to spend time in the low level courses. CLEP tests provided me the same benefit in math.
Actually, that’s intentional. The information is available for those smart enough to seek it. As for the rest, they are duped. So you see, it’s an IQ test hidden within the AP system since IQ tests cannot be openly administered because racism.
Life is an IQ test.
If there is an AP European History, I can understand the non-European focus of World History.
Here is the listing of AP courses:
https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/courses?affiliateId=ap|home&bannerId=herob2|apc-crsindx
And here are the history ones specifically.
Does the AP European History include Classical Greek and Roman? What happens to Jewish, Egyptian, and early Christian history in the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia Minor?
History also ends after WWII, at least that was my experience in all of my history classes in high school. The only reason I know anything at all about the Cold War is because I studied German in college and all of my professors incorporated a history of the GDR in their lectures. I’m not sure if this was because my teachers ran out of time to cover the rest of the 20th century or if it was intentional, but my money is on the latter.
It’s really “Modern European History”, and so starts with the run-up to the Reformation. This is their official description:
Its bypassed to do a more thorough survey of European history, through wars usually neglected by World History.
World History usually contains a bit of all roads lead to America vibe, where histories that only brush against ours are overlooked to be more thorough with the histories that led to the US founding… though, to be honest, the discovery of America to the European continent in the Age of Exploration is a bit fun and creates a nice theater for the NA part of some of the continued strife between the Holy Three European powers (England, France, and Spain).
European history contains a more direct focus on mainland events.
So some really big stuff is still missing?
The course is designed to mirror how college European history courses go, where you spend a semester on ancient and medieval, then a semester or two on modern.
And the class hasn’t changed much in 40+ years either. This is the same broad curriculum I had in 1991 when I took it, and why the course is properly titled “Modern European History”, even if they’ve reduced it in their marketing lit in the last few years.
Kay,
Well said. Yep, no need to know how Stalin surrounded Berlin or was purging people insanely right up until the end. No need to know about Chinese human wave tactics in Korea. No need to know who really gave the nuke secrets to the Russians or the crushing of the Hungarians or Stalin’s plan for a second holocaust of the Jews. Yep, just watch some re-runs of “I love Lucy” and that’s all you need to know.
Kay, go with your gut. Nine times out of ten you’re going to be right on target.
Regards,
Jim