Censorship Is A Longstanding Republican Value

If Presidential bridesmaid Ron DeSantis does for America what he has done for Florida, say goodbye to any field of study that requires critical or abstract thought

Happy Tuesday, folks! This is coming out a bit late, but have patience: I am adapting to yet another commuting schedule. And if you are inclined to do so, please:

In June 2011, Arizonans protested the Tucson Unified School District eliminating the Mexican-American studies program. Photo credit: Arizona Community Press/Wikimedia Commons

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When I read that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was crowing over having protected Florida’s public school curriculum from the African American studies Advanced Placement (AP) course, I thought: we’ve seen this show before. In Texas. In Arizona.

But let’s start with recent events in Florida. On January 12, the state Department of Education's Office of Articulation, appointed by Governor Ron DeSantis (otherwise known as Presidential Candidate Ron DeSantis), rejected the African American studies AP course designed by the College Board. Why? Cassandra Palelis, press secretary for the Florida Department of Education, explained to Jon Jackson at Newsweek, "In its current form, the College Board's A.P. African American Studies course lacks educational value and is contrary to Florida law. If the course comes into compliance and incorporates historically accurate content, the Department will reopen the discussion."

More bluntly, DeSantis calls the course, which asks students to study critical perspectives and theory foundational to the field of African American studies, “indoctrination.” In addition, because it contains material on intersectionality, queer theory, and critical race theory, the course conflicts with the pro-censorship “STOP WOKE Act.” The law, passed last summer in Florida, contradicts every First Amendment precedent established since the 1950s and permits the state of Florida to censor all intellectual and artistic material about race and sexuality.

In fact, because of the book and school speech bans already in place in Florida due to “STOP WOKE” and its predecessor, HB1467, which bans content on and speech about sexuality, it is doubtful that students could legally access much of the course content or speak to their teachers about it.

Banning AP African American Studies is, of course, a stunt, like much of what DeSantis does: no Florida student has ever taken this course, nor is there any requirement that the state’s public schools adopt a specific AP course to have access to others. Although they are now understood as a form of pre-college credentialing that students take throughout high school and are administered by school districts, they function more or less like a high school version of Gifted and Talented programs. Intended as a Cold War measure that would help American students intellectually outpace Soviet youth, the original AP curriculum was created in 1952 with a Ford Foundation grant and imagined as a pathway not to improve public education for all but to accelerate the college education of elite students in private schools. The College Board, which already administered the SAT, took over the AP curriculum and testing process in 1955.

Like most Cold War measures—the “New Math,” President Kennedy’s physical fitness program—AP classes did little to elevate American education. They were targeted early on by right-wing activists like Phyllis Schlafly, who insisted on a return to “traditional” methods and home-schooled her own children for several years to evade modern reading pedagogies.

But unlike other, admittedly more faddish, Cold War pedagogies, after they became established, AP courses settled into what they are today: a way of introducing selected students to advanced, although not genuinely college-level, work and a route to accumulating college credits for free. Although many colleges permit students to transfer all those credits, many elite colleges do not, partly because the content is taught quite unevenly. For example, when I took AP English in 1975 at a private school, we read classic five books a semester; when my nephew took it in 2012 at an urban public school, they read four books the entire year.

Hence, AP courses, while they play some intellectual role in a student’s development, have largely become another form of credentialing and college budget management. For elite schools applying to scarce spots at elite schools, AP courses become part of an admissions formula by which excellent students are left on the cutting room floor in favor of the impossibly excellent student who took every AP class possible and tested in the top percentile. For students applying to elite schools who have attended poor schools, taking AP courses—regardless of their scores—demonstrates character and aspiration.