Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion APUSH may be banned by our school board

That said, the [APUSH] framework has a full measure of shortcomings, starting with its inattention to America’s motivating ideals. The only acknowledgment that the American Revolution had any historical significance is a clause mentioning that it had “reverberations in France, Haiti, and Latin America.” There is no discussion of the intermediary institutions or civic organizations so central to our culture, society, and government.

While identity is declared a major “theme,” and the framework brims with references to ethnic and gender identity, there’s no specific attention to the emergence of a distinct American “identity.” Discussion of race routinely refers to “whites,” washing away real historical complexities in favor of conventional 21st-century racial tropes. The import of anti-Catholic sentiment is absent. Special attention is paid to Mexican immigrants in the 1930s and 1940s (a relatively tiny population), yet the crucial Irish-Italian tensions of the early 20th century are absent.

There’s little about economics that doesn’t feel caricatured or framed in terms of government efforts to combat injustice. Students are introduced to decade after decade of American racism and depravity, with little positive context for the nation’s foreign engagements or its success creating shared prosperity for tens of millions. Little is said of “Manifest Destiny” other than that it was justified by beliefs in “white racial superiority” and “American cultural superiority.” The old framework paid attention to World War II–era “fascism and militarism in Japan, Italy, and Germany.” Featured instead in the new one is the suggestion that sundry U.S. actions during World War II, such as the internment of Japanese Americans, debates over segregation, and dropping the atomic bomb, “raised questions about American values.”