Much controversy has ensued following publication yesterday of my piece revealing that Florida governor Ron DeSantis has refused to approve the pilot AP African-American Studies (APAAS) course for high school or college credit. Most of that controversy has been uninformed. Above all, this is because the College Board has refused to make the APAAS curriculum public. I obtained a copy of the curriculum last year and wrote about it in some detail here.
Now, however, a paper called the Florida Standard has also obtained a copy of the curriculum and written about it. More important, the Florida Standard has posted a copy of the curriculum.
I welcome this development. Any reader can now assess the curriculum and take issue, or not, with my characterizations of it. I will simply note, as I did in my first piece, that the curriculum is not easy to assess. The College Board has left things opaque because it mentions a number of authors, without listing particular articles or books. In some cases, the intended assignment is fairly obvious once you do a bit of research. In other cases, you need to read more widely in a given author’s work to assess their views.
Again, I welcome the opportunity that others will now have to agree or disagree with my initial characterization of the APAAS curriculum — above all, the final quarter of the course, where the politicization is most evident.