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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
I’ve only been skimming this thread, but what I have picked up so far is that your daughter @juliana built a house after she fought against the Ottomans in the civil war.
Correction:
Juliana built the house she was born in, and installed an Ottoman she captured during the Spanish influenza.
No mention of John Marshall?
Juliana doesn’t like to talk about him.
Did you know what 70th anniversary the President was referencing when he delayed implementing the tariffs on China from 10/1 to 10/15?
70th anniversary of “who lost China?” is next month.
If anyone must look it up, our history teaching is failing.
If they entitled the course: World History 1200AD to Present or something like that it’d be better. Otherwise, I don’t see anything that implies it’s all world history from the big bang to present. It’s just world history confined to a discrete period. And, the intro says that.
I don’t think AP classes are a scam, but yes, the buyer has to beware.
Would these be the same buyers who take out school loans?
Advanced Placement originated in the 1950s as a response to the perceived Soviet lead in space. It afforded science and engineering students a means of getting a head start on their college careers so they could graduate early and, hopefully, be of help to counter the Soviets.
This made some sense at the time. Now, as this post asserts, it’s mostly a scam.
Well, all the children are above average….
I remember our AP US History went up to around Vietnam; mostly because the textbook included a segment on Richard Nixon, Red Hunter as lead up to talking about him going to China.
In my imagination he wanders the world righting injustices with a pump shotgun: “It’s time to lay down the law *racks shotgun* Marshall law.”
In one of the games that @hankrhody and I designed he has the ability to break ties. It’s a pretty powerful card, but so are the Three Stooges, which probably says something about the sort of game it is.
The AP courses are probably of the same intellectual rigor as standard courses were 50 years ago, except with more bias.
Or who’s buried in Grant’s tomb.
I finished high school in 1956. At that time, it was not commonly thought that everyone should go to college. So there were two course tracks, academic and general.
This was before all the children were above average. Some went to work in vocational trades right out of high school.
I graduated in 1969 from a big, modern high school in PG county Maryland. It had a whole wing devoted to vocational training.
I lived on Chillum Rd. in 1966 when I got engaged to be married.
Cicero, Euclid, Archimedes…who needs em?
Screw Archimedes.
You don’t have to get past page 3 to see the problem. From the “AP Equity and Access Policy” paragraph:
“We encourage the elimination of barriers that restrict access to AP for students from ethnic, racial, and socioeconomic groups that have been traditionally underrepresented.”
What barriers would those be? As if practically every school in America hasn’t been tying itself in knots for my entire lifetime, to give special advantages to racial and ethnic minorities.
In practice, “removing barriers” would probably mean allowing unqualified students into the AP history course, detracting from the education of those who could handle the material. Then underperforming students would need to be passed, lest the teacher be accused of racism.
There are barriers, of course. I think that illegitimacy is probably #1, followed closely by dysfunctional minority culture that fails to encourage, or even actively discourages, study and effort. Interestingly, Thomas Sowell actually traces the worst aspects of dysfunction in black American culture to the Scotch-Irish. The dysfunction of the Scotch-Irish culture is well documented in JD Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy.
I’m not entirely convinced by Sowell’s argument, though I think that it is correct in part. It does appear to me that a uniquely black dysfunction emerged in the second half of the 20th Century, particularly involving illegitimacy and family breakdown of tragic proportions.
** Added explanatory note: My last paragraph is not well phrased, as it could be interpreted to suggest that illegitimacy and family breakdown are uniquely black problems, which is not the case. But the incidence of these problems are much higher among American blacks, suggesting something unique in black culture behind these issues.
My source for this is The Bell Curve, though I had to look at the figures again to confirm. On many social indicators, the racial disparity narrowed substantially after controlling for IQ. This IQ adjustment had only a small effect on the significant black-white gap in marriage rates and illegitimacy, suggesting that there is a significant cultural cause.
As an example, controlling for age and IQ virtually eliminated the black-white wage gap (from 80% uncontrolled, to 98% uncontrolled, meaning that after controlling for age and IQ, black wages were 98% of white wages). However, the raw illegitimacy gap of 50% (black rate 62%, white rate 12%) only narrowed slightly, to 41% (black rate 51%, white rate 10%) after controlling for age and IQ. (Note that both rates are tragically higher today, as The Bell Curve was published about 25 years ago.)
I never learned any eastern history in any of my coursework, high school or college.
What little I know has come through independent reading.
Tianenman Square is too recent (6/4/89?) for a 70th anniversary… so what is it?
I’m gonna go with the end of the Chinese Civil War. Well, the latest one.
That civil war was between the Communists, who prevailed and took over the mainland, and the Nationalists, supported by America, who occupied Taiwan. This particular part of Eastern history touches Americans in significant ways. China’s current role is big in trade and economic issues and America’s support for Taiwan has been a long-standing point of contention with China. I think this should be included in any course in American history.
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So there are no parents anymore? No freedom to change schools. No ability to home school? And in University, if parents pay, they can’t choose any courses?
Parents can’t even know the grades.
Geez Guys – don’t you know absolutely nothing happened that was important before 1867 when Marx wrote Das Kapital- it is after all the most cited book in the social sciences written before 1950 according to Wiki.
We need to make sure we properly indoctrinate our children and screen any material very carefully so they are not exposed to anything that is unsuitable like that Econ porn ‘The Wealth of Nations” or that filth “the Declaration of Independence”, or particularly that trash – “the Bible”.
What is really alarming is how now with the internet there are all these websites that provide “knowledge” of thousands of cultures that go back millennia. Our Children might get the wrong ideas from all this so-called “histories” and start thinking for themselves. Perish the thought.
That long ago? I thought history began in 1968.