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A couple of weeks ago, in the week of Jan 16 thread, there was a discussion of the kerfuffle re Florida refusing to offer the pilot of AP African American Studies. There were a couple of minor developments last week. First, the course description is available here
Second, Florida specified its objections here
Now, I am not a fan of most "studies" courses, because, in my limited experience, they tend to lack rigor and often push a political viewpoint, which is both a disservice to students and, to the extent that students are required to parrot that viewpoint, a First Amendment violation when the course is taught in public schools (and in private schools as well, in California). I have not looked closely at the course description for the AP class, so I don't know if it has those flaws. That being said, this decision by Florida seems to be more a part of the DeSantis for President campaign than a principled objection. That is because the course description is not a curriculum, and the course description, like all AP course descriptions, says:
I have attended several AP trainings in my day, and can attest that they make a big deal about individual teachers being given autonomy, as long as their syllabus addresses the content and skills set forth in the course description. So, none of the readings complained about are required, and teachers are free, as required by Florida's "Stop WOKE Act" to assign readings on all sides of the issues in question.
And, btw, the claims on the other side that Florida does not want to teach African American history is also nonsense, because teaching of African American history is mandated in FL schools
Edit: PS: There is a very odd complaint in the Florida DOE's list: It objects to a reading by one author in part because, "Kelley's first book was a study of Black communists in Alabama." Not, 'an adulatory study," but merely a "study." It is like objecting to a reading by Donald Horowitz because he wrote a study of ethnic riots.
Or, in other words, the complaints against DeSantis seem to be more a part of the long-running "Defeat DeSantis" campaign than a principled objection? I don't think there's any question that DeSantis is angling for the White House, such that everything he does can be plausibly cast in that way. But asking politicians for principled objections seems to always and everywhere end up as an isolated demand for rigor.
The complaints from Florida seem perfectly reasonable to me; I regard so-called "intersectionality" as much more like a religion than a legitimate form of academic inquiry, and I don't see any value in teaching it in schools (beyond, perhaps, including it in a religious studies course as an example of a secular dogmatism that has emerged in response to the broad exclusion of deity-oriented faith from public debate). Of course, reasonable minds may differ on this point, and I'm comfortable with each state education system in the U.S. reaching its own conclusion through standard legislative processes, which Florida has done here.
But I am also broadly disinterested in having "standardized" education across the country, and would rather see states actively competing in that arena rather than outsourcing everything to monocultures like the College Board. Very few people seem to actually care about AP Black-Queer-Feminist-Communism, and most of the complaining I see is false claims (as you noted) about black history being removed from Florida schools. Given that no actual history is being excluded from Florida schools, only certain forms of political indoctrination, what complaint remains? The complaint that DeSantis is doing this for the votes?
I have a lot of problems with democracy, but ultimately "politician doing the things his voters want him to do" just isn't very high on my list of things to worry about.
ETA:
This seems like a great way to get poor scores on the exam, though. "You are free to teach what you like" does not translate into "and your students will still do well on the exam." Students who are not closely able to at list imitate the dogmatic thinking from the objectionable readings seem unlikely to do well on the exam that is the ultimate point of any AP class. My own experience with AP exams is that failure to hew closely to the "suggested" readings will often leave your students swinging in the wind.
That seems an odd response to a post in which I explicitly criticized both sides.
I agree; Florida is free to teach what it wants. But note that the standard legislative process in Florida has yielded a law, the Stop WOKE Act, which explicitly permits the teaching of "CRT"-related topics.
The quoted material does not say "you are free to teach what you like." It in fact says the exact opposite, as I noted: That teachers are required to "address[] the content and skills set forth in the course description." What it says is that teachers are free to teach the material how they like.
IF the test requires students to "imitate the dogmatic thinking," then I will be the first to agree with you. But note that that would only happen in free response questions, and one cannot assume that there will be any free response questions on the topics at issue.
I take issue with your statement that doing well on the exam is the ultimate point of any AP class. It wasn't when I taught an AP class, and any teacher who thinks it is the point should be reassigned, if not fired.
Well, you (I think at least partly correctly!) identified the DeSantis administration's arguably unprincipled motivations, but you did not actually call out his opponents' straightforwardly equal-but-opposite arguably unprincipled motivations. Even the Twitter link you provided to Florida's specified objections is a Tweet deriding those objections as obvious wrongthink. All I did was make the hypocrisy explicit.
To the best of my understanding, this is only if CRT topics are taught about, not if they are presented as correct. As far as I have seen, nothing in the AP readings seems to accommodate the possibility that any of these claims are wrong. There are not even readings from, say, black scholars like Clarence Thomas or Thomas Sowell. Not even a pretense of ideological neutrality is evident in the selection of materials.
Presumably one cannot assume that there will not be any free response questions on the topics at issue, either, so this seems to be an obvious case of "the College Board should have been clearer, then, so the fault continues to lie with them."
Look, I love to tell my own students how intrinsically valuable learning is, too, but I am not stupid. The vast majority of them take my classes because I am an obstacle imposed between them and where they want to be. Students who take AP classes out of nothing but inquiring interest are lovely and wonderful, but if you're not doing your best to help your students score well on their AP exams, then you are doing at least many, and probably most of them a grave disservice. They would not be doing the work that AP courses demand, if they did not anticipate a reward in the form of legible credit towards their upcoming university matriculation and education.
As it happens, I did not read the Twitter thread. I posted that link because that is where I found the letter. It is not on the FL DOE's news page, nor does it come up when I search for "African American Studies" in their webpage.
As I have pointed out repeatedly, the AP course description accommodates the possibility that they are wrong by leaving it up to the teacher to decide how to cover the material.
Obviously. The point is that your assumption that the test requires parroting of ideas re the topics is based on a mistaken premise.
Who said anything about "nothing but inquiring interest"? A course that improves the skills students will need to succeed in college is a course which provides rewards to students, even if it does not provide the more tangible, yet far less valuable, reward of college credit.
"I didn't read the stuff I linked everyone to" is certainly some kind of response, sure.
I didn't assume anything--I only identified an uneliminated possibility. The possibility itself was objectionable. The College Board's failure to eliminate the possibility is where the objection is grounded. Thus "it's merely possible, not certain" is no answer at all.
Sorry, I charitably assumed there was an interesting point underneath what I took to be kind of a silly one (firing AP teachers for teaching toward success on the AP test). The putative intrinsic value of learning seems like at least a potentially interesting topic.
The idea that incrementally improving general study skills is somehow a more valuable reward than college credit seems odd to me, given that the point of success in college is, for most students, more college credit! In particular, AP courses are a chance to cut down on the number of years students need to spend paying university tuition. If our time is the most valuable thing we humans have, then helping your students secure credit in advance is surely at least as valuable as incrementally improving their study skills--which many will never use again after college, alas. (And if you do think that is tragic, then of course--see my point about the intrinsic value of learning.)
The link was to the FL DOE document posted there. Why would I read the idiot comments re the document on some Twitter feed, if the point was to provide the document itself? The real mystery is why you think it was some sort of "gotcha" to note the existence of said idiot comments. How are they relevant to the issue?
Except that my entire point is that the FL DOE claims that it is certain, and that they are wrong.
I didn't say that it is more valuable.* I simply noted that even a student has no intellectual interest in anything at all, but rather whose only goal is getting a college degree as easily as possible might well enroll in a class which improves academic skills even if it did not offer a chance to acquire college credit.
*In the eyes of the student, that is.
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