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crockett, AP classes all have testing, that testing will be based on the APUSH framework, which consists of specific history, each called a Key COncept within the APUSH framework for example::::::::::::
APUSH, In a section on the Great Depression (Key Concept 7.2) we learn:
Although the New Deal did not completely overcome the Depression, it left a legacy of reforms and agencies that endeavored to make society and individuals more secure, and it helped foster a long-term political realignment in which many ethnic groups, African Americans, and working-class communities identified with the Democratic Party.
This sounds like the voice of the Democratic Party itself. It simply sets aside the numerous economists who argue that the New Deal prolonged and deepened the Depression and that its legacy of ?reforms? fostered patterns of dependency and the arrogation of extra-Constitutional powers to the federal government.
The broader problem in APUSH is not that it presents progressive readings of American history but that it presents such readings as settled and undisputed.
For a history course that is premised on fostering ?historical thinking skills??let?s remember: chronological reasoning, comparing and contextualizing, crafting historical arguments using historical evidence, and interpreting and synthesizing historical narrative?the lack of attention to well-grounded scholarship that presents different interpretations of U.S. history is remarkable.
APUSH often seems to be pushing something, and it is not critical, historical thinking. It is a worldview that emphasizes America as a place of European conquest, economic exploitation, and the struggle for basic rights against the power of the privileged. Sometimes these concerns break out into overt emphasis but they are present throughout.
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