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player ready...Could peace break out in the culture war between Gov. J.B. Pritzker and his Florida Republican counterpart, Ron DeSantis?
Alas, probably not yet. Both governors are reported to be reviewing newly released details of the nonprofit College Board’s first Advanced Placement African-American studies course to see if it is suitable for testing college-bound students in their states, as it has been deemed in 30 others.
An earlier “pilot” version of the document drew fire from DeSantis, after the Florida Department of Education threatened to drop the course due to what DeSantis labeled a “political agenda.”
Ever watchful for what he deems “indoctrination” of students by “woke” radicals, DeSantis had threatened to ban the college preparatory class when he learned it included segments on “queer theory” and “abolishing prisons,” among other controversial topics.
DeSantis and his state’s Board of Education said in January that the course was “contrary to Florida law and significantly lacks educational value.” That, he noted, would violate a DeSantis-backed state law that, among other provisions, bans instruction that defines people as oppressed or privileged based on their race.
In response, Gov. Pritzker fired off a letter to the College Board, declaring that his state will reject any revised course that doesn’t contain “a factual accounting” of history, “including the role played by Black queer Americans.”
Pritzker, who like DeSantis is a possible presidential contender in 2024, said he was “extremely troubled” by news reports that DeSantis was pressuring the College Board to change the AP course “to fit Florida’s racist and homophobic laws.”
Instead, he called for the board to “refuse to bow to political pressure that would ask you to rewrite our nation’s true, if sometimes unpleasant, history.”
It’s up to the College Board, Pritzker said, to “preserve the fundamental right to an education that does not follow the political grandstanding of Governor DeSantis and the whims of Republicans in Florida.”
On Wednesday the College Board released what some have called a “response,” although David Coleman, chief executive of the College Board, insisted it was shaped months ago — and not by politicians but only by the input of hundreds of experts, as well as principles and practices that underlie other AP courses.
Either way, the revised 234-page curriculum framework contains a voluminous amount of Black American history, ranging from Africa, slavery, Reconstruction and the civil rights movement to redlining and Afrofuturism.
Added are some useful new topics, like “Black conservatism,” that cause one to wonder why they were not included before.
The new course differs from the earlier draft, particularly for what now is missing or downplayed. No more critical race theory. Black Lives Matter, incarceration, queer life and the reparations debate have been moved from the exam to a list of optional topics for a required research project.
Reaction was predictably mixed. Conservatives tended to claim victory while progressives charged a cop-out — and a blow to academic freedom.
The politicians are a separate matter. You’re probably not wrong if you think DeSantis is trying to stir up the same propagandists on the political right that helped Virginia’s Gov. Glenn Youngkin turn his anti-critical race theory campaign into rocket fuel for his come-from-behind election.
They received unintended help, it turned out, from Democrats and others who tried naively to ignore the larger core issue for parents: How are our children being taught?
Instead, Youngkin’s campaign caught fire against the more experienced Democratic former Gov. Terry McAuliffe largely because parental concerns outweighed the poorly aimed charges of racism that Youngkin received from the left.
Perhaps that’s the sort of parental backlash that Pritzker was trying to block when he took up the cause of educational integrity against a tide of rising ambition on the political right.
At about the same time, yet another 2024 possibility, California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, tweeted a jab at DeSantis and Florida’s law that critics call “Don’t Say ‘Gay'” for its limits on classroom instruction on gender and sexuality.
“DeSantis has decided black history is irrelevant and ‘lacks educational value,'” Newsom tweeted. “‘Don’t Say Gay’ —> ‘Don’t Say Black.'”
In fairness, DeSantis stresses that he supports Black history as a key part of American history, but wants to protect it from encroachments by opportunistic liberals. That’s an often-heard line from conservatives. As debatable as it may be, critics do themselves a disservice if they try to shout down such arguments instead of engaging with them in a civil manner.
Leave it to DeSantis, if he insists, to promote the wrongheaded notion that higher education is supposed to offer comfort and good feelings for you to feel content with your world instead of exposing you to new viewpoints that might challenge you into thinking more critically, a major purpose of higher education.
One might think that a graduate of Harvard and Yale Law School such as DeSantis would know better than that. Or perhaps he is following another time-honored rule of populist politicians: Don’t let the voters think you’re talking down to them, even when you really are.
Fortunately, now that details of the AP course have been released, the results offer a lot for both governors, as well as their states’ parents, to approve. The updated syllabus offers a list of courses that seeks to immerse students in Black history, culture and racial controversies in a way that, until now, has been quite rare outside of college classes.
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History, it often has been said, is for arguing about. “The past is never dead,” as William Faulkner famously wrote. “It’s not even past.”
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