Perspective: As the right fights the teaching of race, a new AP course expands it
. In 1967, students in Philadelphia walked out of school to demand change — a moment historian Matthew Countryman has described as a catalyst for a movement to use curriculum to drive social change.
These fights to expand the curriculum not only occurred in K-12 schools, but also at predominantly White colleges and universities. Black student protests at the University of Chicago led to the formation of a committee charged with adding African American studies to the curriculum.
But the efforts to reshape curriculum provoked resistance by those who insisted on students needing to understand the standard White-oriented Westernized curriculum. Of those who sought to broaden the state of knowledge, historian Arthur M. Schlesinger wrote, “They have filled the air with recrimination and rancor and have remarkably advanced the fragmentation of American life.
The introduction of the African American studies Advanced Placement course reflects a willingness to grapple with a complicated, nuanced understanding of American life, even as some critics try to push for a vision of American history and society that is narrow and limited. In the push to expand what educators can teach and students can learn, African Americans today and in the past lead the charge for academic freedom and reveal it to be one of academia’s most potent tools for social justice.
This essay is the 10th and final one in the Freedom to Learn series sponsored by PEN America, providing historical context for controversies surrounding free expression in education today.
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