A New AP: The Potential of AP African American Studies
Recently announced by the College Board—the company that creates and manages AP courses, exams, and SATs—was the new AP course, AP African American Studies. In 2021, the College Board announced that a pilot of the new course would begin rolling out in the 2022-2023 academic year. This is a much-needed addition to high school curriculums as African American studies are often not given enough attention or focus in typical history courses such as AP US History. This new course aims to cover multiple fields of African American culture, such as literature, arts and humanities, political science, geography, and more.
AP African American Studies is being implemented slowly through school systems across the country, and the first pilot of the 2022-2023 school year will be implemented in 60 schools. In the spring of 2024, several hundred more schools will include this new AP course in their curriculums. By 2024-2025, African American Studies will be made available to all high schools in the United States.
While few details about AP African American Studies are available, we do know that the course will consist of four different units: Origins of African Diaspora; Freedom, Enslavement, and Resistance; The Practice of Freedom; and Movements and Debates. Then, there will be a Course Project at the end.
Unit 1 opens with an introduction to the course as well as an early dive into African kingdoms, empires, and politics. The targeted time frame for this unit is 5 weeks. The next eight weeks are spent on the next unit, which explores the slave trade and the abolition of slavery. Another 5 weeks will be spent on Unit 3 and the reconstruction of black politics as well as resistance. Finally, the last 7 weeks will cover Unit 4 which explores modern topics, such as the Civil Rights Movement and Black voices in leadership and politics.
Just from a small glance at the framework, it’s clear to see that the course aims to cover a wide variety of topics and subjects, ranging from early African origins to modern topics such as the Black Lives Matter movement and affirmative action. However, this might not be the best way to teach the history of African American culture to high school students, and instructors here at OHS have different takes on it.
Dr. Smith, an OHS Assistant Head of School and history instructor, has a positive outlook on the AP course and the content it plans to provide. He believes that the four units look terrific and the framework, while possibly appearing vague, will become more specific once applied to classrooms. According to Dr. Smith, all AP frameworks tend to have a broad framework, and “it's up to the teaching of it to figure out where you’re going to have a lot of detail.” Ultimately, he believes that this course will allow for “nuanced treatment of topics that are essentially important to American history that get swept up in the sort of survey nature of the [AP] World History course and the [AP] US History course.” Based upon his experience, the World and US History courses feel like a “march through time,” and that key elements are only studied for a brief amount of time. This new AP course can then provide an opportunity to expand on those ideas and connect them to contemporary discourse. From his perspective, the AP US History course currently covers a broad spectrum of topics, so another set of courses such as AP African American Studies, would be beneficial in classrooms to take on those finer-grain approaches.
However, Dr. Smith does share some worry about the course, as he says “when you come down to it, [AP African American Studies] is an AP course, so at some point, you’ll be gearing that learning towards the very particular test that will be framing that class.” Shifting all focus to the preparation of a test takes away from the ability to learn and interact with the texts and subjects, which Dr. Smith doesn’t believe is an adequate trade-off. Overall, he has a positive outlook on the new AP African American Studies course and believes it can lead to more opportunities for students down the road, but worries that the testing side of it can hinder the ability to learn and appreciate the topics.
American Culture and Society instructor Dr. Adrienne Chudzinski shares some of Dr. Smith’s concerns as well. Even though she feels that the content and ideas for the course are great and much-needed in a school’s curriculum, she is concerned that the framework is too broad for proper study of the topics. She explains how “she “[doesn’t] love the AP structure […] and [has concerns with this course since it is] an AP class.” Dr. Chudzinski points out that the AP, in regards to covering all topics, “only skims the surface and expects students to learn so much information by rote memorization and regurgitate it all out on one exam at the end of the year.” She says “the amount of material they expect students to know is a bit unreasonable for one test.” She acknowledges that trying to cover this large of an amount of material in only one year doesn’t allow for much in-depth conversation on specific topics.
In one of the more politically controversial developments related to the AP African American Studies course, the College Board has removed some readings from the original course curriculum. Dr. Chudzinski says this “gives [her] pause as a historian because they are removing authors and ideas that are challenging and uncomfortable for people to talk about, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be talked about.” The AP African American Studies course has chosen to have less of a focus on controversial topics such as the Black Panther Party and intersectionality and has moved many topics to be optional instead of required in order to not cause controversy and receive backlash. Dr. Chudzinski disagrees with these actions as she believes education isn’t about being comfortable, but rather allowing the truth to be discussed, especially in a course that is supposed to encompass all of African American history.
Both Dr. Smith and Dr. Chudzinski shared their perspectives on a hopeful future for the AP African American Studies course. They believe that the content will be interesting and beneficial for school curriculums, and will both be using it to shape some of the history courses taught at Stanford OHS today. While OHS is slowly moving away from the inclusion of AP courses, many courses are being introduced that are intended to replace their AP counterparts such as the American Culture and Society (ACS) course, an alternative to AP US History.
The ACS class was brought into conversation multiple times with Dr. Smith and Dr. Chudzinski as it has some unique and beneficial features. Since it isn’t an AP course, it has the flexibility to dive deeper into topics and ideas that students have greater interest in. Teachers and students alike can further discuss readings and subjects in class, which an AP course cannot do with its large framework and short amount of time. Introducing this greater flexibility and deeper discussion is OHS’s overarching goal with regard to removing AP courses in general. Dr. Smith expressed that removing AP courses from OHS’s course catalog and replacing them with a more detailed counterpart will allow for not only more in-depth conversations about subjects in class, but also an increased ability to learn and interact with the material since there isn’t a test looming large ahead. Dr. Chudzinksi explained how ACS is divided into case studies, and that these studies set students up to explore the topics on their own in a final project at the end of the class and beyond as well.
While AP African American Studies course has its share of concerns and areas for improvement, the concept and idea for a course centered around African American history is much-needed to fill a gap found in many high school curriculums. Although Stanford OHS is moving away from the inclusion of AP courses, instructors and faculty are planning to watch how the AP course rolls out in the coming years so that they can then implement some of its topics into ACS and other history courses here at OHS.