In July, the College Board shocked high school educators and administrators around the country when it announced sweeping changes to its Advanced Placement World History (APWH) course beginning in the 2019 school year. The new version of the course was initially set to be shortened to cover events and trends in world history from 1450 to the present, but after a massive backlash by parents, students, and teachers regarding the Eurocentricity of such a course, the College Board partly backtracked on this plan.
As it stands, the APWH course will be broken into two components. APWH: Modern, a course with content beginning in the year 1200, will study pre-colonization civilizations in Asia, Africa, and the Americas, as well as world history events in the modern age. The College Board also committed to exploring the development of another course, APWH: Ancient, which would continue to cover the same timeframe as the current APWH offering. However, the introduction of the Ancient course is dependent on confirmation by colleges that they will award credit for the course, an unlikely situation considering that college world history classes are taught in more depth than the AP through the spreading of content over many courses.
The current APWH course, offered to freshmen at IHS and taken annually by over 250,000 students around the world, covers over 10,000 years of world history. This history begins with the start of civilizations, and continues to the present, focusing on trends and interactions rather than on specific events and people in history. The main criticisms about the course have been that it moves too quickly and covers history with too little depth. Scores on the AP exam reflect the fast-paced nature of the course—in 2018, 43.8 percent of test takers did not receive passing grades (3 percent or higher on a scale of 5). Only 8.7 percent of students received a score of 5 on the test, by far the lowest of all of the College Board’s AP history and social science offerings.
That said, teachers at IHS feel that instead of changing the course, the College Board would do better to clarify their expectations for the current test and provide support to APWH teachers in planning curricula. “When I first started teaching APWH, it was a large amount of information in a short amount of time. Considering that their idea for the course is that anything in history could be mentioned on the exam, they haven’t done a great job of helping us.” says Bradley Benjamin, the APWH teacher at IHS. He added that, “breaking it up and offering just one course or the other is not going to give students a full view of history.”
Many also feel that although the Modern offering was expanded to cover world civilizations like the Mongol Empire and the Mali Empire, the course will still focus too heavily on the history of Europe. “I think they’re destroying what APWH was meant to do, which was to create a less Eurocentric version of history.” says Matthew Prokosch, a teacher of AP European History and Global II at IHS. “With the exception of [the years] 1200-1400, the Modern course will still be in the context of what Europeans were doing.” In addition to removing all mention of the start of human civilizations, the Modern course will also eliminate coverage of classical societies from 600 BCE to 900 CE, which includes the development of modern religions, the Islamic Caliphates, and several other topics that play a role in understanding developments in modern history.
As the result of New York State’s strictly defined structure of social studies curricula, students at IHS will likely have to choose between taking the Modern course or the Ancient course, if its development continues. “From a financial perspective, this makes no sense at all,” notes Mr. Prokosch. “Many districts, including ours, may have to choose between one course or the other depending on district policies and state requirements, and the College Board is effectively having two of their courses compete against one another.” The State Education Department’s outline for high school social studies curricula states clearly that students must have an understanding of the first civilizations and of classical societies, neither of which would be covered under the Modern course, and this will play a big role not only in IHS’s decision, but also in the choices of districts across the state.
A final offering that the College Board has provided is the Pre-AP World History course, an offering that allows teachers to teach courses that align at least partly with the course requirements of the actual AP. The intent is to allow students to fine-tune their skills without the pressure of an AP course, and while it would be costly to implement, it is an option for schools that are unable to offer the Modern course if the Ancient course’s development stalls.
The College Board is yet to announce whether colleges have approved of the APWH: Ancient course, and as a result, the IHS Social Studies Department has not made a decision regarding this change. The current APWH offering will be replaced in the 2019 school year, and a decision regarding the Ancient course is expected to come soon. Regarding this choice, Mr. Benjamin adds, “My job is to teach and engage students, and whatever the district decides to do, I’ll try to do my best.”