Peninsula not affected by APUSH controversy
United States History Advanced Placement (APUSH) is a rigorous course that goes in depth in the understanding of U.S. history.
On July 30, 2015, the College Board released a new edition of the AP U.S. History Course and Exam Description (CED). This curriculum is different in that it allows the teachers to focus more on general events that occurred in American history instead of trying to address many specific topics throughout the year. To achieve this, the College Board reduced the number of learning objectives from 50 to 19, grouping together the previous objectives into fewer, broader topics. In addition, the new curriculum now includes figures such as the Founding Fathers and focuses more on America’s role in World War I, World War II and other wars, which were omitted from the previous curriculum.
“I definitely think that in APUSH we were time-crunched. If the number of requirements [are] lessened and the teachers go more in depth on each different aspect, I feel like that will help students better understand the material,” senior Jeffrey Tan said.
The new edition of the APUSH CED allows students to think analytically, centralizing the main ideas of history with multiple angles of opinion, while providing a curriculum that is easy to understand and allows teachers to personalize it by focusing on topics they believe are more significant than others.
With a major emphasis on practical thinking, the new curriculum will develop procedures on how to perceive America’s identity, unity and self-governance. Discussing the objectives in many perspectives will therefore allow students to see more than just one side to a story.
“[Both] the negative and positive [sides] are a part of our history. You have to look at both of them to really understand our history,” APUSH teacher Logan Tootell said.
This new version also benefits the teachers by allowing them to structure their courses through focusing on major ideas. Furthermore, the revised CED allows teachers to select specific events and historical figures for the students to interpret and investigate while examining primary and secondary sources, a key concept in the new curriculum. This method gives more freedom to the teachers to decide how to interpret certain topics.
However, critics argue that the writers of this new curriculum believe in American Exceptionalism, the idea that America is uniquely different, implying that America is amazing and wonderful. They believe that the writers were supporters in this idea of American Exceptionalism, and were using their beliefs to dignify this country’s history. These critics supported this idea by pointing out that the new curriculum added patriotic figures such as the founding fathers, including Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and John Adams, as well as founding documents.
The College Board refutes these criticisms, saying that the concept of American Exceptionalism is only included to explain the concept of national identity, and was not a central theme in the new curriculum.
Overall, the new edition of the CED will prove to be more beneficial for students and teachers than the previous curriculum. By pinpointing the concept of breaking down major events and clarifying the framework as a whole, the students will be able to contemplate historical events more analytically.
“The framework gave flexibility to teachers on what to teach and what they are passionate about [that] might be relevant to their students,” Tootell said.
