After receiving a warning from the Arkansas department of education, state high schools have been told not to teach a sophisticated placement course about African American history, which has infuriated advocacy organisations.
The warning issued by Arkansas school authorities is the most recent instance of conservative politicians attempting to restrict teaching on subjects such as sexual orientation, racial history, and other matters that they consider to be “indoctrination.”
The Arkansas Education Association (AEA), which is a professional organisation for educators in the state, said that the most recent decision is of “grave concern” to its members as well as other residents who are concerned about “the abandoning of teaching African American history and culture.”
It should be made very obvious that the ongoing assaults on Black history at the state level are anti-democratic and retrograde, as stated by Johnson. The unfortunate truth is that these politicians are committed to ignoring the children and teenagers of our country in order to further their own political objectives.
According to a report from the Arkansas Times, the state education department of Arkansas made the announcement that it will not be giving credit for the Advanced Placement (AP) African American history curriculum on the first day of the 2023-2024 school year for many of the state’s public schools.
The formal statement was made after department officials phoned educators on Friday to inform them that the AP course would not be recognised for college credit in the same way that comparable courses on other subjects are recognised for college credit.
According to the department, the class may be in violation of the state’s Literacy, Empowerment, Accountability, Networking, and Safety (Learns) Act, which is a new legislation that was implemented this spring during the administration of Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee, a Republican who served as the White House press secretary during the time that Donald Trump was in office.
The Learns Act places restrictions on the curriculum on a wide variety of themes, such as gender and sexual orientation, as well as courses that “indoctrinate students with ideologies, such as Critical Race Theory.”
“The laws of Arkansas include provisions on themes that are forbidden. In a statement to the Arkansas Times, the department stated, “Without clarity, we cannot approve a pilot that could inadvertently place a teacher at risk of violating [state] law.” The comment was made in reference to the course that was withdrawn.
In addition, the officials revealed that the state would not be paying for the end-of-year test for the class that enables high school students to receive college credit.
In most cases, the fee for the credit qualifying test is paid for by the school offering the additional AP course.
According to Axios’s story, the pilot programme was provided at two different high schools in the previous academic year. NBC News claimed that the course was going to be offered this year at six different schools, one of which being the Central high school in Little Rock, which was at the centre of the forced desegregation in 1957.
The most recent objection to the Advanced Placement course follows the rejection of the class by the education department of Florida in January.
