College Board’s revised AP European History Course and Exam Description is better, but still light on liberty, writes David Randall in Churchill In, Columbus Still Out on the National Association of Scholars (NAS) blog.
NAS criticized last year’s APEH version in The Disappearing Continent, calling it heavy on “progressive dogma.”
Winston Churchill
The update adds discussion of national and European identity and gives more prominence to religion, writes Randall. There’s more on Britain and a less rosy view of the Soviet Union. The treatment of free markets is “less biased.”
However, “the words liberty and freedom are still almost absent from its standards, and there is no sense that the struggle for liberty is a central thread of European history.”
In addition, the section on Soviet history “still pulls its punches by failing to state explicitly that the regime committed starvation-genocide of the Ukrainians, and smaller genocides and ethnic cleansings of nations including Balts, Tatars, and Poles.”
APEH stresses “the inevitabilities of social and economic history” with little role for “individual endeavor.” Christopher Columbus doesn’t get a mention.