Ben Carson: AP US History Course will make students ‘sign up for ISIS’
theGRIO REPORT - Fox News’ Ben Carson proclaimed during a speech at the Center for Security Policy’s Nation Security Action Summit on September 29 that, upon finishing their AP US History courses, most students would “be ready to go sign up for ISIS."
Fox News’ Ben Carson proclaimed during a speech at the Center for Security Policy’s Nation Security Action Summit on September 29 that, upon finishing their AP US History courses, most students will “be ready to go sign up for ISIS.”
The former neurosurgeon turned potential 2016 GOP presidential candidate echoed strong pushback from other leading conservatives such as the Republican National Convention, which has levied numerous criticisms against the course’s recently overhauled framework, stating in a resolution that the curriculum “deliberately distorts and/or edits out important historical events.”
The controversy over the College Board’s Advanced Placement US History course — offered at most US high schools — began earlier this year, when the company announced changes to the core curriculum.
Despite the College Board having no authoritative power to directly dictate what a particular school does or doesn’t teach, school districts pay close attention to the company’s standards so that students will know the material that graces year-end Advanced Placement tests. High marks on these tests — scored on a 1 to 5 scale, with a 5 being the best possible score — can even allow students to place out of certain courses in their university studies.
But Carson was more concerned about the lack of balance and perceived harshness of the new curriculum, saying that there’s “a whole section on slavery and how evil we are, a whole section on Japanese internment camps and how we slaughtered millions of Japanese with our bombs,” while lamenting the fact that “there’s only two paragraphs in there about George Washington” and “little or nothing about Martin Luther King.”
The College Board, in response to these criticisms, stated that their intention was to create a framework that allowed teachers leeway and the opportunity to choose their own methods of instruction. An open letter from the College Board stated that one of the key goals of the project “was that the course and exam allow teachers to go into depth about the most significant concepts of the course.”
In the same letter, the company wrote that its first goal was that the course “met the expectations of college and university history departments,” so that high marks on the Advanced Placement test would “continue to be rewarded with college credit and placement.”
Despite the outcry and criticisms levied at its revision of its US History curriculum, the College Board still plans to implement similar revisions to the core standards of its AP European History and AP Art History courses for the Fall of 2015.
