The state of Oklahoma introduced and passed a bill enabling then to ban Advanced Placement U.S. History in the classroom, while also instituting a new educational requirement for students.
This new bill is set to require its students to learn from a designated list of 58 “foundational documents.” These include the Ten Commandments, two sermons and three speeches that were delivered by Ronald Regan. This curriculum includes one speech given by George Washington; however there are no speeches from any democratic presidents since Lyndon Johnson.
Although the bill covers a significant number of texts that are included in the Advanced Placement U.S. history course, the bill is influenced by their ideologies and religious beliefs.
This education bill was composed by Oklahoma Representative Dan Fisher, and was approved by the Education committee with an 11-4 vote. Fisher argues that the documents they will be learning from still provide the fundamentals of the U.S. history. Fisher says that these documents “shall form the base level of academic content for all United States History courses offered in schools around the state.”
There was opposition in regards to previous Advanced Placement history course that has been brought fourth by several people, including a history teacher and anti-common core activist. They believed it to reflect a radical revisionist standpoint that emphasizes more negative, than positive aspects of American History.
Krieger and Robbins say it, “reflected a radically revisionist view of American history that emphasizes negative aspects of our nations history while omitting or minimizing positive aspects.” Mrs. Martinez, a U.S. History and AP Government teacher at our High School has added that removing this test is a personal bias that they are instilling in all their schools and disagrees with their actions.
Martinez says, “History and government will always be controversial because everyone has their own bias an interpretation of history.” In response, College Board advocated that this opposition was based upon misunderstanding of the test. Dan Coleman is the president of The College Board emphasized that college professors and K-12 teachers around the country write the actual tests.
By Mikaela Slade, Editor-in-Chief
The Claw 