After reading the article about cutting funding to the AP US History program in Oklahoma, I did not know what to think. On the one hand, I was not surprised. As a native Georgian (where education is not a top priority), bills and laws like this seem to come up a lot. On the other, the justification for this law seemed to be particularly flimsy and transparent. What I understood from their explanation was that they did not want certain things to be taught because they wanted to control the ideology that students grow up to live by. As I considered the problem more thoroughly however, I began to understand their justification for censorship as an attempt to protect the future and unity of the country. This was the same justification Plato used when he proposed the idea of withholding some information (and inventing other information) from children in the education system. What it all boiled down to for me was this: What is enough and what is too much?
This seems to be too much. As a former APUSH student, I believe that the course aims to accurately cover all parts of the United States’ history, both the good and the bad. Just because events in our history portray our country negatively does not necessitate sweeping them under the rug. Both the good and the bad have built the country we live in today.
In this situation, I do not believe the benefits of withholding information substantially outweigh the importance of communicating the truth.
In case you did not see it, click here for the article I have responded to.
2 responses to “Censoring AP”