AP

Fear of a Black Studies Planet

by Roderick A. Ferguson

A scholar whose work was named in Florida's decision not to support the AP African American Studies course discusses a long history of conservative efforts to control textbooks and teaching and, failing that, to create politically useful hysteria about indoctrination. 

Florida Offers Justifications for Rejecting AP African American Studies Course

The state has contended that the curriculum prioritizes indoctrination over education, but their claims distort the meaning of some key terms. 

Complaints against the AP history exam keep coming

by David M. Perry

The demands for rote memorization, coupled with Western centrism, are failing our students.

Rejecting AP Courses

Eight private schools in Washington area -- including St. Albans and Sidwell Friends -- announce they will stop offering Advanced Placement courses.

College Board revises AP European history test in response to criticism by conservatives

The group that pushed for changes  –  the National Association of Scholars  –  says it’s an improvement but more changes are needed.

Why I regret letting my teen sign up for an AP course

by Kate Haas

A college-level class should get kids excited about undergraduate coursework, not turn them off to learning.

The conservative attack on the AP test for European history is beginning to gain traction

More websites (like the College Fix) are relating the complaints of the right-of-center National Association of Scholars.

Conservatives are now taking aim at the AP test in European history

"The new curriculum for the Advanced Placement European History test hides the role of Christianity in European history, and also hides Islam’s violent conquests in Europe and its tradition of jihad."

Let’s embrace competition in advanced-placement testing

by Stanley Kurtz

The battle over the College Board’s standards for its Advanced Placement (AP) U.S. History course reflects not only our political polarization but also some profound moral disputes.

The bizarre war against AP U.S. history courses

by Catherine Rampell

It seems strange to organize an educational system around what can’t be taught to children.

AP History survives funding cut in Oklahoma. Here's why.

Responding to uproar, a conservative Oklahoma lawmaker backs off bill to curb funding for AP history that he says downplays American 'exceptionalism.' The bill 'was very poorly worded,' he said.

The Oklahoma A.P. Test Controversy Masks the Real Scandal of American History Education

by Jonathan Zimmerman

The great elephant in the A.P. classroom: Many college-level instructors don’t teach these skills in their own courses.

Oklahoma Lawmakers Vote Overwhelmingly To Ban Advanced Placement U.S. History

An Oklahoma bill banning Advanced Placement U.S. History would also require schools to instruct students in a long list of ‘foundational documents,’ including the Ten Commandments, two sermons and three speeches by Ronald Reagan,

Eisenhower Memorial critic is placed on overseeing panel

Bruce Cole, who has published at least two critical articles of the Frank Gehry design, will head up the commission.

Possible Griffin shipwreck artifact to get CT scan

The legendary shipwreck, lost in the seventeenth century, may have finally been found.

Legacy Of Nixon tapes: Skepticism, distrust endure

WASHINGTON (AP) — It's a good thing Richard Nixon was such a klutz.The president's ineptness at all things mechanical is what prompted his aides to install a voice-activated recording system that didn't require Nixon to push an on-off button, ensuring that every word he spoke in the Oval Office and other key locations was caught on tape.With the secret taping system on autopilot — seven microphones planted in wall sconces and the president's desk — Nixon largely forgot about it, and let loose with the raw, gossipy, conniving and too-clever words that ultimately toppled his presidency and forever changed the way Americans think about their presidents and their government.The tapes — the last installment of them released Wednesday — are like the black box in an increasingly out-of-control airplane, recording right up to the crash.In the tapes, Americans began to see their presidents as "less glorious, less heroic, less romantic — either more like us, or more like people we don't like," says presidential historian Julian Zelizer of Princeton University....

Egypt's Malawi Museum looted

CAIRO — As violent clashes roiled Egypt, looters made away with a prized 3,500-year-old limestone statue, ancient beaded jewelry and more than 1,000 other artifacts in the biggest theft to hit an Egyptian museum in living memory.The scale of the looting of the Malawi Museum in the southern Nile River city of Minya laid bare the security vacuum that has taken hold in cities outside Cairo, where police have all but disappeared from the streets. It also exposed how bruised and battered the violence has left Egypt.For days after vandals ransacked the building Wednesday, there were no police or soldiers in sight as groups of teenage boys burned mummies and broke limestone sculptures too heavy for the thieves to carry away. The security situation remained precarious Monday as gunmen atop nearby buildings fired on a police station near the museum....

What would compel a black American to move to Stalinist Russia?

WASHINGTON — The oil painting of a black Russian man lay quietly for years in a back corner of an antique shop in a dingy walking mall in Moscow.Andy Leddy, a white American working on a U.S. government contract for a refugee program in 1992, a year after the Communist Party lost power, pulled the canvas out and unrolled it.“Why would there be a portrait of a black man in Russia?” Leddy recalls thinking. “They treated people of color horribly here. But look at it. It’s heroic and romantic. It is odd to see a black subject in a heroic pose.”The clerks told him the unsigned painting depicted a man named Patterson who had starred in a classic Russian movie, but that was all they could tell him....

Warsaw Uprising brought to life in film

...The scenes are as riveting as any Hollywood war movie. But they are snippets of historical footage from the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, enhanced by modern coloring and sound techniques — and turned into a film.The only purely fictional elements are voiceovers presenting an imagined narrative that stitches together the footage: Two brothers scour the streets of the Polish city tasked with filming the 1944 rebellion of Warsaw residents against their Nazi occupiers, commenting on what they witness, from soup kitchens to scenes of destruction.It makes for a mesmerizing account of the fierce house-to-house fighting against the German army that began on Aug. 1 and ended 63 days later with the insurgents surrendering, following the deaths of some 200,000 rebels and residents. “Warsaw Rising” is cobbled together from black-and-white silent footage of crews that the Polish resistance Home Army sent fanning through the city to chronicle the uprising. Cinematographers hired by the Warsaw Rising Museum added coloration and sound that give a real-life feel, while modern editing techniques provide a polished, fast-paced narrative....

In ‘Lee Daniels’ The Butler,’ history told through a black lens

NEW YORK — History in the movies has often been seen through white eyes: civil rights-era tales with white protagonists reacting to a changing world.“I’ve been in some of those movies,” says David Oyelowo, a star in “Lee Daniels’ The Butler.” ‘’I was in the ‘The Help.’”The viewpoint of “The Butler,” though, is refreshingly colorful. In it, Forest Whitaker plays Cecil Gaines, a man born to sharecroppers who’s turned into a domestic servant. After fleeing north, he rises to serve as a butler in the White House for seven successive presidents, spanning from Eisenhower to Reagan, from Jim Crow to Barack Obama....