By Kemmie Jackson
There is a new Advanced Placement class for students across the nation to take part in: AP African American Studies. This year will be the first time that high school students across the nation will have the option to take the course, and 60 U.S schools so far have offered it as part of their fall curriculum. The course covers everything from slavery to civil rights to pop culture. This course will help students of all backgrounds better understand African American history, give them the opportunity to focus on aspects of history that they weren’t taught before, and better students’ knowledge for the future.
This AP class directly focuses on African America and covers all African American history, giving students a broader knowledge of the past. The College Board says that this class will further dive into difficult issues, such as unequal opportunities. Not only will this class talk about African American hardships, but African American achievements as well, and how they overcame their hardships. This AP class is meant to elevate African American history and education.
AP classes are designed to prepare high schoolers for university level work and give students the opportunity to take university level classes, but how will this class further the knowledge of high school students? African American studies provides a broader canvas to prepare students for work in majors such as history, law, political science, and sociology. According to The New York Times, not only will this class explore history but also civil rights, art, literature, and geography, which contributes to all the majors that were mentioned before. Another example is if a student wanted to go into a specific type of law like civil rights, this class could help them learn about specific discrimination laws towards African Americans, and the history behind these laws, that might be glossed over in other courses. Students can also learn about different African American authors, thinkers, and movements, get inspiration from them, and come up with new ideas to inspire their own.
The African American Studies AP course has immense potential to create a positive effect on students and shift in public perceptions of how American History is taught. Many schools have a reputation of not teaching students the whole of African American history or not teaching it at all. Those who call African American history “watered down” in schools will now be challenged in their assumptions.
Most critically, in creating this class, the College Board is showing their support of a subject that some critics think this shouldn’t be taught in school, in an environment where through the debates about “CRT” and awareness of “Black Lives Matter” and education-to-prison pipelines, education has become highly politicized and polarizing. The class will give students another chance to know the facts and thorough history of African Americans in a curriculum supported by one of America’s premiere higher educational institutions that has made strides in not only levelling the testing playing field, but in responding to changing attitudes and times of students and their needs.
African American Studies will give black students the opportunity to know their own history and background in a way that has been unavailable until now, and is a chance for everyone to learn and discover new parts of a history that is both a heartbreaking and inspirational part of the American experience in a world that is striving for tolerance, equality, and understanding.
