UPDATE: Conservative Pressure on the College Board around AP US History

[Ryan Goble]

Well, I'll give you three news sources on this one so you can choose your own adventure:

1.The New History Wars - The New York Times

Navigating the tension between patriotic inspiration and historical thinking, between respectful veneration and critical engagement, is an especially difficult task, made even more complicated by a marked shift in the very composition of “we the people.” This fall, whites will constitute a minority of public-school students in the United States. “Our” past is now more diverse than we once thought, whether we like it or not.

2. Revised AP U.S. History Standards Will Emphasize American Exception... - Newsweek

In other areas, language was changed or eliminated. “If there were places where we felt like the language of the framework seemed to unintentionally indicate some kind of a bias we tried to eliminate that. There were places where some critics...felt like the way things were phrased was anti-American. It didn’t make any sense to me. But if it felt like the way things were phrased indicated any kind of a bias or slant, we tried to neutralize that bias.”

3. College Board Caves To Conservative Pressure, Changes AP U.S. Histo... - Think Progress

Some of the main criticisms of the guidelines, conservatives voiced, were less emphasis on the founding fathers and more emphasis on slavery. The guidelines also included earlier American history that included violence against Native Americans and mentioned the growing influence of social conservatives. There were also complaints that World War II was not emphasized enough, but military victories will be given more attention in the new standards. Mentions of slavery will be “roughly the same” as previous standards, according to Newsweek.