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AP World History wants to adopt history began in 1450, but forget about the fact that it was the moors whom brought Europeans out of the Dark Ages. All this is done to advance the agenda of helping the masses forget. Europe just didn't pop up at a heightened society sense out of nowhere. This is gibberish. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...s-are-furious/
I can't get past the grammar errors in this post expressing outrage about educational quality going downhill. But 1450 sounds like a strangely arbitrary date to choose as the beginning of World History. What did they do, pick a date out of a bowl of clippings with numbers written on them?
I can't get past the grammar errors in this post expressing outrage about educational quality going downhill. But 1450 sounds like a strangely arbitrary date to choose as the beginning of World History. What did they do, pick a date out of a bowl of clippings with numbers written on them?
They probably picked that date knowing perfectly well that no matter what date they picked there would inevitably be sturm und drang over it.
Also, for those who can't be bothered to read past headlines, here's a highly relevant paragraph from the linked article. It makes clear that the subject of World History is not being gutted but simply expanded into two courses. In other words, each course will be a subset of all history there is to study. Do people really think that's beyond the pale? American History is also a subset of all history. So too are virtually all history courses: History of the Crusades, History of Scandinavia, History of Japan, etc. Need we get all worked up over those? I mean, sure, get all bent out of shape because the Roman Empire isn't covered in a history course focusing on Gilded Age America. Rage because the Ojibway aren't discussed in a History of Islam course. Knock yourselves out. But don't pretend your emotions make any sense.
Quote:
The College Board, which is a nonprofit organization, announced recently that it was making big changes in the course, and said it would publish an updated course and exam description next year for the 2019-2020 school year. The more than 9,000 years that will no longer be covered in AP World History will instead be put into a new series of courses the College Board is creating for high schools that can afford to purchase it, called Pre-AP World History and Geography.
As to the date 1450? Why not? World History is going to be disproportionately balanced towards more recent events, due to their relevance as well as the relatively abundant material pertaining to them. An even date fixed not long before the great European radiation out across the globe that is arguably the seminal event of the modern world seems appropriate. Again, the selection of a dividing date was always going to be a no-win decision.
They probably picked that date knowing perfectly well that no matter what date they picked there would inevitably be sturm und drang over it.
Also, for those who can't be bothered to read past headlines, here's a highly relevant paragraph from the linked article. It makes clear that the subject of World History is not being gutted but simply expanded into two courses. In other words, each course will be a subset of all history there is to study. Do people really think that's beyond the pale? American History is also a subset of all history. So too are virtually all history courses: History of the Crusades, History of Scandinavia, History of Japan, etc. Need we get all worked up over those? I mean, sure, get all bent out of shape because the Roman Empire isn't covered in a history course focusing on Gilded Age America. Rage because the Ojibway aren't discussed in a History of Islam course. Knock yourselves out. But don't pretend your emotions make any sense.
As to the date 1450? Why not? World History is going to be disproportionately balanced towards more recent events, due to their relevance as well as the relatively abundant material pertaining to them. An even date fixed not long before the great European radiation out across the globe that is arguably the seminal event of the modern world seems appropriate. Again, the selection of a dividing date was always going to be a no-win decision.
1450 seems logical enough. Medievalists generally consider the end of the middle ages and beginning of the modern period to be somewhere in the 15th century. It's pretty obvious that the age exploration and colonization of the Americas ushered in a new chapter in world history.
If they are creating new courses that cover antiquity and the middle ages, that makes sense.
The more than 9,000 years that will no longer be covered in AP World History will instead be put into a new series of courses the College Board is creating for high schools that can afford to purchase it, called Pre-AP World History and Geography.
The College Board wants to add AP classes to high school curricula. They grow, and they figure student knowledge grows. So they split the content and put it in the Pre-AP course. This way they achieve their goals and students scaffold up. The question is how many history departments will add the course? Smaller schools will not.
Only an incredibly poor teacher, devoid of knowledge and imagination, would be incapable of teaching World History from the rise of Sumer 7,000 years ago to the near-Present.
It's like the moronic imbecile who spent 6 freaking weeks "teaching" the US Civil War in US History. Making students memorize battles and casualty figures, only to regurgitate that on quizzes and tests is neither teaching nor learning.
If someone can't teach the US Civil War in 3-4 days, they should be fired, and black-listed from ever teaching anywhere in the US.
This comment reminded me of a day when I was in 7th grade. My 7th grade science teacher was out and one of the history teachers, who I didn't have for class, subbed for my class. He walked in and said he didn't know much about science, but knew a lot about history. He proceeded to give us a condensed history of the world in one 46 minute class period. The entire class was absolutely memorized by his lecture. He was talking about the 1960s and the Vietnam War as the bell rang. This was the 1967-68 school year. After a couple of college degrees, that class still stand out as the best single class I ever had. The lesson was that a good teacher who knows the subject matter can use the time allotted to teach the subject matter. I had too many college professors who would say, Well we didn't cover the last 8 chapters of the book, but you are still responsible for that material on the final. I always wanted to ask whose fault it was that the material wasn't covered. It was often because the professor cancelled classes or got off on to many tangents.
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Originally Posted by North Beach Person
The problem with AP World History (or any World History course for that matter) is the overwhelming amount of material to be covered.
Many, if not most, school systems somewhat solved the problem for the non-AP course by splitting it up, Early World some time in Middle School (which I happen to disagree with) and Modern World some time during 9th-11th Grades. As a note, the Modern course starts at.......................1450 or thereabouts.
AP World has become unwieldy over the last decade or so. The College Board changed the recommended (meaning required) syllabus several years ago and added both time periods and areas to it. The amount of time spent covering Europe after that recentering was to be no more than 20%.
Teachers are faced with basically doing a chapter plus a week from a 40 chapter book during a 30 week school year time frame (AP tests are given the first two weeks of May). Add to that what many schools systems, like my former one, have done by mandating every fifth class Benchmark tests and getting rid of every day classes and going to an every other day block schedule and you had classes not getting through the mandated material.
To address something else: no high school course, even AP, is designed to be an in depth course. All of them across the disciplines are meant to be, and always have been, survey courses.
Oh, for my bona fides. I was both an AP teacher (Psychology and World History) as well as my school's AP Coordinator (a College Board mandated position equivalent to a Department Chair).
Sample school syllabus for AP World detailing Scope and Sequence:
I've subbed for AP classes in about a dozen school districts. It is obvious that to teach this class successfully, you have to teach to the test. I see some teachers who prepare their students very well and others who do too many random assignments and get behind.
One example comes to mind. The class was AP World History. I think I asked how many people would be taking the AP World History test. No more than 1-2 students said they would be taking it. One student said to me, Mr. Villageidiot, you have to realize that no one in this school has ever pass the AP World History test. Mr. Regular Teacher doesn't teach us what we need to know. I found out later that he was the second teacher teaching the course because no one had passed the test with the previous teacher.
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Originally Posted by redguard57
Agreed. "What to cover" in history classes has been a point of contention since Herodotus. Although I'm sad they're cutting antiquity and the middle ages - periods that are very important to who we are today.
Personally, despite the fact that I'm very intrigued with the modern period, I think as a society we are too obsessed with 19th and 20th centuries and especially their wars. The Nazis in particular are given too much coverage.
See my comment above. For an AP course, this is all spelled out for you. The teacher needs to ensure that all material is covered for the test. AP courses are not courses where you can only teach what you like.
Quote:
Originally Posted by redguard57
I generally agree that the modern period is more accessible.
Even so, WWII still gets greatly disproportionate coverage as compared to, oh, events of the 1970s or something, which we have plenty of film of. I've recently been in a number of high school history classes. One of my observations was that Watergate got less coverage than it did when I was in high school in the 90s. There's this weird comic-booky fascination with WWII and Hitler as a kind of super-villain & the classes spend a ton of time on what I considered minutiae of WWII. I actually think the comic book movies so popular in the 2010s have contributed to this.
I was recently involved in a survey of AP history high school students asking them about what they feel their history classes covered well and no so well. The most numerous response for what they felt got short shrift were the 1990s and 2000s.
The reason the 1990s and 2000s don't get covered well is because the teacher did not stick to a schedule and they are forced to rush through the last chapters of the course.
I usually don't see any disproportionate coverage of WWII in any of the districts where I have subbed, but I did see one where the teacher mainly covered WWI and WWII in a US History class that was supposed to be 1877-present. In fact the entire final was on those two wars.
Not surprised, especially since that time period is when the globalist plantation system was born (early to mid fifteenth century).
HIStory.
One massah, one world, one holy & hallow plantation.
Last edited by kovert; 08-29-2019 at 03:57 PM..
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