AP History Coursework Review Causing Protests

Students, parents, and teachers are keeping up the protests against a conservative Board of Education’s plan to review and ultimately change an Advanced Placement (AP) history course to suit their conservative views. The push by the board seems to be toward promoting patriotism and downplaying social disorder. I’m thinking the controversy every year about celebrating Columbus Day vs Columbus’ actual impact on Native Americans and their culture but it’s more than just that. The board’s approach to the curriculum review, including having students on the committee, hasn’t satisfied the protesters. They seem like a pretty savvy group to me. As a former educator I can say from firsthand experience that despite student, parent, and teacher input the BOE usually gets and implements their way. Case in point would be every new school year’s calendar. Despite all the voting on tentative calendar choices A, B, C, or D, we always ended up with choice E. None of the above, this being the BOE’s choice, usually completely different from the choices we were given. But back to the history course review, I hate the idea that history, like statistics, can be skewed and slanted to favor the opinions or needs of any group. It seems like this is true though and the criticism of the course by the Republican National Committee and the Texas State BOE speaks volumes as these protests are taking place Colorado.