NAS: New AP European History framework ignores religion

Re Jon Rowe's American Creation Helps Keep Scholars and Others Honest on America's Founders' Religion, it's not just over at the AC blog [where I'm a contributor].


The controversy of the politicization of history is not just restricted to America's. As we know, Protestantism's rejection of central theo-philosophical authority began to wring changes well before the Enlightenment of the 1600s. Via the right-leaning blog The College Fix:

The new Advanced Placement European History framework has received a makeover that eliminates religion’s influence on the development of Western Civilization, ignores Winston Churchill, whitewashes the evils of communism, and lauds the welfare state, according to David Randall with the right-of-center National Association of Scholars.

“The new curriculum omits the development of faith and freedom in European history and focuses on the development of the welfare state,” Randall told The College Fix in a phone interview.

The association released a report authored by Randall this month titled “The Disappearing Continent” that claims the framework “warps and guts the history of Europe to make it serve today’s progressive agenda.”

Virtually all mention of religion in the 19th century is removed, and several key figures such as Christopher Columbus and Winston Churchill are not mentioned in the College Board’s framework, Randall said.

David Coleman, president of College Board, was a major architect of the Common Core Standards developed under the Obama Administration.

The College Board’s new AP European History examination, which debuted last year, “turns Europe’s history into a foreshortened, neo-Marxist, generic narrative of historical modernization, powered by abstract social and economic forces,” the association’s report states. “It defines modernization around secularism, the state, and a thin supportive intellectual history.”

The report also finds the framework “treats the movement to abolish slavery without mentioning how it was inspired by religious faith, let by saints such as William Wilberforce and hymned to Amazing Grace.”

NAS concluded it “presents European history in dull, flat, politically slanted jargon” and is a “hollowed-out version of history.”

Leading the charge to inspire the College Board to re-work the standards, NAS members are hopeful they will be able to effect change, Randall said.

After the new AP US History curricular framework was revised in 2015, it was subsequently revised by the College Board after uproar that it largely ignored the Founding Fathers and the heroics of World War II, among many other complaints.