Link to Carson’s comments on AP History classes.
“I am a little shocked quite frankly looking at the AP course in American history that’s being taught in high schools across out country right now,” Carson said. “There’s only two paragraphs in there about George Washington. George Washington! Little or nothing about Dr. Martin Luther King.”
Carson then lamented a few negative aspects of history included in the course framework like “a whole section on slavery and how evil we are,” Japanese internment camps, and “how we wiped out American Indians with no mercy.”
“I think most people when they finish that course, they’d be ready to go sign up for ISIS. I mean, this is what we’re doing to the young people in our nation,” he said. “We have got to stop crucifying ourselves.
No. None of my students wish to sign up for ISIS.
By examining the mistakes we make as a country, we can examine perhaps the most American words in any of our foundational documents: “to make a more perfect Union.”
Today, for instance, we discussed the Articles of Confederation government. We discussed its many flaws, but also what it did well – keeping the idea of republican government alive, settling the northwest territories dispute, and establishing the principle of a united nation. But that was balanced by its lack of an executive authority or federal court system, its inability to regulate trade or levy taxes; its lack of being a real government rather than a loose confederation of independent states. It had to be scrapped – amendments were insufficient to create a true national government and thus cement the independence we fought so long and hard to obtain.
We discussed the particular American contribution to world political theory: the idea of a fundamental law that is inviolable and difficult to change to create a bedrock set of rules and norms for government. The British have no written constitution, no fundamental law. That’s us; we did that. Almost every country in the world now has a fundamental law. True, many ignore them, but the very preference for the rule of fundamental law is an American invention.
But we also talked about the problems in amending the Constitution and how that creates a stagnant government that only changes in times of crisis or in a spasm of reform.
In other words, we engaged in the process of historical analysis.
I wouldn’t presume to tell Dr. Carson how to operate on a patient. I would kindly request he stay the fuck out of my classroom.
Some added comments: Carson either has not read the AP material and is relying on false information provided by others or he is flat out lying. My two children both took AP History and Washington and Dr. King were more than adequately covered. Then again maybe he is simply delusional. – Steven D
