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
The syllabus is about concepts, not individual heroes. That’s what makes it AP. There are only a tiny number of names. Including Washington and King, of course. There is a legitimate political angle, I think. Making the history about whole societies instead of a Few Great Men is unfair to fascists who believe society is just a kind of sea in which the Great Men swim.
The new framework – which has wingnuts’ heads a spinning – offers some nice thematic guidelines. But one thing it does is take away the “list of names and places” aspect of APUSH.
It replaces them with suggestions about what specific material to cover. The new test has slightly more writing and fewer multiple choice by replacing those MC with short answers.
The short answers might – to riff of the above example – ask for an argument FOR a stronger national government in 1787 and an argument AGAINST. The students could feel free to mention Washington’s concerns about anarchy after Shays’s Rebellion. Or mention Jefferson’s concerns about centralized power.
The AP isn’t mandating an answer the way it does on MC questions, but opens it up for students to “show what you know”.
I guess freedom of thought is the thing that really freaks them out.
freedom of thought is meaningless without thought so many people can not value frrdom
I’m presuming that Advanced Placement History is after a standard history course. Because one should know the facts before discussing what they mean.
BTW, I’d love to take hawesg’s course.
Yes, it’s after standard history all the kids learn in Grade school and Middle school.
Typically, it’s an 11th grade course, though some places offer it to 10th graders because they hate those of us who read the exams.
Sounds like when we had standard American History. I was in Advanced Placement and we covered the standard stuff and went into more depth on others, like the labor movement in the USA. No guilt trips, but it was the 1960’s.
called thank you Doctor King. He was attending Florida Public Schools.
I call bullsh*t.
There are those who would dispute wither or no the northwest territories dispute was settled – unless the Army showing up and taking over defines “settled” – but otherwise spot-on analysis.
I think the dispute was over which states and Canada claimed the territory, not the actual settlement of white colonists and displacement/ethnic cleansing of Native Americans.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Territory
Yes, several different states claimed territory to the Mississippi – then the western border of the United States. Virginia claimed pretty much everything north of the Tennessee/Kentucky line.
Giving those lands up meant giving up a tremendous amount of potential revenue for those states.
Tres cool. Charles P Pierce tipped you today. Okay, he gave Steve D credit, but he got the link right.
That is VERY settled. Despite the claim that violence settles nothing, it has settled most issues in world history. And would we have gay rights today without the Stonewall riots? The Civil Rights act and anti-discrimination laws without the riots of the ’60s?
Ben Carson is a grifter. And a medical specialist who feels denied the ability to print money. And a showboat.
He might be a fool, but he’s looking for bigger fools.
Paging Dr. Oz, Dr. Oz please pick up line 409.
Ben Carson is a bit of an enigma to me. Why would someone who’s respected in his field decide to turn himself into just another right-winger? I could see it of he brought something new to the table, but he doesn’t. He’s just another clownish, fact-free, scold, blathering on from the cons’ common trove of made-up history and selective interpretations of religion.
I can understand why people like Sarah Palin and Rick Santorum pull on the big rubber shoes, affix the red putty nose, and shoulder the tiny parasol: they have no other talents. Dr. Carson’s meteoric descent from respected professional to hapless, generic, right wing pol is beyond me.
Doctors think they are God.
OK, how does it make sense to be saying, at the same time:
?
Fair and balanced?
You’re thinking of the real Dr. King, in history. The King inside Carson’s head would never mention slavery or criticize the United States. He would never say anything to make white people feel bad because that would be racist.
I suppose this is progress from the days, not too long ago, when the conservative outrage du jour would have been that Dr. King (the commie!), Jim Crow, or the Civil Rights Act were mentioned at all.
Hey, I’m a glass half full kinda guy, right?
They’ve re-murdered that Dr. King and replaced him with a platitude-spouting cyborg Dr. King that opposes affirmative action and food stamps. It’s the latter King that Carson wants to see in the Apush curriculum.
Ben Carson cannot even use proper English. “There’s only two paragraphs ….”. He is and idiot.