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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good Monday morning, everyone. Hope you had a good weekend thanks to Brigid Bergen for filling in on Thursday and Friday. Let me lift the curtain on a little behind-the-scenes moment as way to lead into our first segment of the week. Maybe you heard the story that, for the first time in American education, there has been an AP African American Studies class at some US high schools during the school year. AP courses can earn you college credit in high school and help you get into college because it looks ambitious to take them. AP African American Studies has been offered in 60 schools as a test run this year while they finalized the curriculum.

Maybe you heard that a couple of weeks ago, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida said he would ban the course from his state's high schools because of elements that he claimed were indoctrination. We figured we might do a short version of the course here on the show for a week or so with an actual AP African American Studies teacher sometime in school is out maybe this summer or during spring break and call it Radio Free Florida. You can't take this course if you live in the Sunshine State, but they can't stop you from listening to the radio, Radio Free Florida AP African American Studies. Nice idea in theory.

Then last Wednesday, oh, it was the first day of Black History Month and the day of Tyre Nichols' funeral. The College Board which develops and approves all high school AP courses announced the final version of the curriculum that would go national and lo and behold, almost everything that Ron DeSantis objected to was taken out. Truth is, we still don't know if the changes will satisfy DeSantis.

He hasn't said yet one way or another last I saw, maybe his Republican presidential primary ambitions will lead him to block anything called African American Studies, as something that makes white students feel bad about themselves or his indoctrination and run on that. Or maybe he'll declare victory over the changes in the course, approve it, and run on that. Now, the controversy runs both ways.

Many African American studies scholars and other critics are saying the College Board caved to DeSantis and the course is now tainted for having been politically watered down. DeSantis is even claiming in a statement released by his office that he's responsible for the changes, but the College Board says no, these changes were decided on before DeSantis spoke out and for good reasons determined by their panel of scholars who wrote the course.

Reality, I guess, lies somewhere on a scale between indoctrination and cowardice. Let's get specific about what's in what's out and what's at stake with Noliwe Rooks, chair of the Africana Studies Department at Brown University and founder of what she calls the Segrenomics Lab, we'll get into that vocabulary word, and she is author of very relevant book, Cutting School: The Segrenomics of American Education. Professor Rooks, we appreciate you joining for this. I see you're traveling today, so double thanks, and welcome back to WNYC.

Noliwe Rooks: Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.

Brian Lehrer: We'll get into the DeSantis politics of it, and the College Board politics of it, of course, and the specific things that were removed. I thought we might start a few steps back since you do education about education as part of your teaching and research. This course is called African American Studies, not African American history. Does that distinction matter?

Noliwe Rooks: Yes, as we started really hearing different sides and different kinds of stakes with these changes, one of the things that has come to the fore is if the course had been an African American studies course. If it had been a course that just focused on what had happened, primary documents, really just giving students the skill to engage with documents, and just hear the outlines of African American History in the contributions Black people have made, there would not have been the same kind of kerfuffle or agita because African American Studies is much broad.

We have theories that we engage, some of the theories like intersectionality, for example, like racism, like talking about how white supremacy around the globe has impacted different kinds of institutions and people, the theories that that's based on, that those kinds of lessons are based on is what makes it African American studies, as well as it being interdisciplinary, history is one lens for understanding the world, it's one way of making sense of what happened. African American Studies is inherently interdisciplinary. We engage with sociologists, anthropologists, philosophers, astrophysicists, if we work it in.

It's the studies part, it's the parts that help you want to think about gender. Again, some racial dynamics and hierarchy, race and racism, it seems like that is what the college board they say, as you mentioned before DeSantis ever offered dissent, they had already decided that those things needed to go for a variety of reasons. I'm just not sure if that makes the issue better or worse, quite frankly.

Brian Lehrer: On that distinction, continuing to explore that distinction between studies and history, I looked at the list of all 30-something other AP classes that exist and none other is called studies. In the social sciences and history area, there's US history, European history, also US government and politics, and Comparative Government and politics. I guess that's probably International, but nothing else called studies. When those things, some of them like European history, which I see from their syllabus includes the teaching of colonialism, and certainly aspects of US history unavoidably, wouldn't they include things you just mentioned, like racism and white supremacy?

Noliwe Rooks: They absolutely do, and there have been a number of AP teachers, high school teachers who've come out and said, "In a lot of ways, what's in the African American Studies, AP course, is not substantively different than how they teach AP US history, in terms of, of mentioning, West Africa, talking about the Caribbean, the role of Caribbean slave trade. Some of the things are very similar and would cover the same kinds of topics.

The things that seem to make this a point of contention, I think, is the larger context within which we're debating American history right now, and with which we have a large number of politicians and legislatures and governors, who have really doubled down on the idea of talking of-- If you are talking about Black people, specifically, and you want to talk about histories of racism, or structural inequality, or the ways that certain ideas, demonize Black people and, maybe lift up aspects of white culture, if you want to do that in relation to Black people, you're a racist. When it happens, as you're pointing out in AP history, you're just helping really advanced students thrive.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, any AP African American Studies, teachers from the 60 pilot programs happened to be listening? I know that's a needle in a haystack because they're just 60 schools nationally. Oh, and it's during the school day right now. If so, we would love to hear your call to give your impressions of the pilot course and these changes, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692.

But since it's unlikely that we'll get anybody who actually fits that description, precisely, any other African American Studies or history teachers, at any level, very invited to call lower grades or high school or college or take on any of this, or anyone else, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer maybe some current high school or college students who have recently taken such a course. Or anyone else with a question or comment, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692 or tweet @BrianLehrer for Professor Noliwe Rooks, Chair of Africana Studies at Brown University, 212-433-9692.

All right, Professor Rooks, let's get into some of the particulars here. Maybe most shocking to people who've been reading these new stories is that compared to the pilot course currently being taught the revised course, according to the New York Times, deletes topics including Black Lives Matter and the Movement for Black Lives, also Reparations, also Intersectionality. It deletes iconic Black female writers such as Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, Angela Davis, Kimberle Crenshaw, who all get at least mentioned in the original version, and it deletes a unit on incarceration and abolition.

Some but not all of these people are subjects are listed as optional project topics. There's also the debate over whether to include, the College Board says that they decided that the pilot course was too weighted toward contemporary theorists in that pilot run. Big picture, how do you see the changes?

Noliwe Rooks: One thing I really do want to point out, I mentioned that this is taking place in a particular kind of context in history. A couple of days after DeSantis made his whole statement about indoctrination and he has literally passed something called the anti-woke law. He was not just talking about his personal preferences as to topics like gender and sexuality, as you mentioned, that's one of the units that was taken from required to optional or you can do a project on it. It was taken out of the core curriculum, a really in-depth dive into gay and queer lives and movements and writers and thinkers.

This law that DeSantis in the legislature passed does, in fact, make the teaching of some of those topics illegal in the state. A few days after DeSantis made his remarks, Sarah Huckabee Sanders standing in the doorway of Little Rock Central High School, which some of your listeners will recall from the Little Rock Nine, which was a huge moment in the history of educational integration, where they had to call out the 101st airborne, combat-hardened troops who had served in Vietnam to have nine children enter a classroom to integrate it in Little Rock. That's where she chose to stand a few days later and say, I too denounce this curriculum. I too will refuse to have it taught here. There's--

Brian Lehrer: If I can jump in on that just so people know Sarah Huckabee Sanders in context, maybe you think, oh, yes, wasn't she that spokesperson for Donald Trump when he was-- she is now the governor of Arkansas and she has also been tasked to give the Republican response to President Biden State of the Union address tomorrow night. Not sure if you knew that.

Noliwe Rooks: I did not.

Brian: That Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

Noliwe Rooks: That Sarah Huckabee Sanders, I'm sorry, I forgot to mention, she's a brand new governor, relatively new. This is one of the places where she wants to start. All across the country, there are smaller and larger districts that are doing something similar. While I understand the focus specifically on DeSantis in Florida, I do think the College Board found themselves in the situation where this is a product that they are trying to sell to school children in territories and places and states and in school districts that increasingly, these topics have become politicized to a point where they would be illegal.

That fact, the rising fact of what it is that we're seeing educators and politicians and legislators target is needing to be banned, is needing to be kicked out of school systems. Overwhelmingly, what books are being banned? These topics help to illustrate things that have Black characters, and queer characters and that talk about contemporary social movements, like pushing back against police brutality. I think it's a pretty broad, stunningly concerning issue that's taking place. The College Board, when they say back in December, we had some conversations and we decided to take some things out, they knew what was going to be upsetting to many people.

Many feel they weren't just sitting there. I actually believe that they did not immediately say, oh-oh, the first time we recognize that Black Lives Matter was a political topic that a whole lot of folks reject I don't think it was when DeSantis said.

Brian Lehrer: When DeSantis spoke two weeks ago.

Noliwe Rooks: I do believe that they made a choice, though, to back down.

Brian Lehrer: Why do you think in the context of what you were just saying that they put those things in originally?

Noliwe Rooks: When they first began, this thing has been under development for the better part of a decade, I want to say. Someone from the College Board can say for sure, I know, years it is about a decade ago, I was first contacted about the College Board putting together different groups of advisors, almost 300 scholars over that period have participated in different kinds of ways and times. When they started talking about this iteration of the class, though, it was a very particular period of time in 2020 where the outcry over George Floyd in particular, who we saw the officer with the foot on his neck and he, like others, died yelling for his mother.

There was a real desire right then to say, we have got to have these kinds of topics and issues around police brutality, around incarceration. Those are key for any discussion of Black people and Black lives right now. Those topics were, it was just non-brainers for lack of a better way of saying it. We are in a very different political moment. Again, the point that I want to make is, it's not just one corporation in one state. This is indicative of the state of the nation right now. It is worth paying attention to, in that context, as much as for what happens for the school children in Florida.

Brian Lehrer: You said the College Board reached out to you at some point. Did you personally have any input into -

Noliwe Rooks: I did not.

Brian Lehrer: -the pilot curriculum? No.

Noliwe Rooks: I didn't. It's one of those things where I kept saying, I'm going to do it next time they ask. I'll respond next time they ask and I just never did. I have some friends who did. I know people who have participated.

Brian Lehrer: Here's a clip of DeSantis objecting specifically to things that he says aren't really even African American Studies. You've already mentioned some of these things in our conversation so far. He says these things must have been grafted on to satisfy other people's political agendas. We'll get your reaction on the other side. Here's the clip.

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Governor Ron DeSantis: This course on Black history, what's one of the lessons about? Queer theory. Now, who would say that an important part of Black history is queer theory? That is somebody pushing an agenda on our kids. When you look to see they have stuff about intersectionality, abolishing prisons, that's a political agenda. We're on that's the wrong side of the line for Florida standards. We believe in teaching kids facts and how to think, but we don't believe they should have an agenda imposed on them.

[end of audio playback]

Brian Lehrer: Governor Ron DeSantis, a couple of weeks ago. Professor Rooks, the things that he mentioned there, he's trying to argue that these aren't even about Black Lives Matter or reparations or incarceration, not Black or African American Studies, even per se. They're about other things. Does he have a point in being skeptical of the inclusion of those topics as grafting on other activists or other topic areas of genders?

Noliwe Rooks: Also, and here we go back to where we began this conversation in a class on African American history, he would have a point. He's responding to the curriculum is if it were African American history, the things in the past that happened that we can agree on that took place. That's okay. These things that are trying to help you understand the past and the present as constituted, in part, by things like sexual identity and preferences, things like sexuality, things like race and racism. Those are core to what African American Studies was founded to do.

It was founded in the late 1960s, early 1970s by student protests on college campuses, in middle schools, in high schools who said that when we sit in these classrooms we've just now been invited between 1968, 1970, to start desegregating higher education in numbers. As we sit in these classrooms, we don't recognize the United States that they're talking about, because it's a United States that doesn't acknowledge these activists who founded Africana and AF Black Studies said it doesn't acknowledge how systems of power, like if you hide those systems of power the world that we live in doesn't make sense.

The reasons that we're sitting on campuses and having never read a book that talks about colonization, that talks about the police brutality that we experience, that only talks about black people as needing to pull up their bootstraps harder or burn some more midnight oil. We need these theories that help us understand what's happening. Again for African American history, he absolutely has a point. They don't need, it doesn't have to be there for African American studies it does. Again, it's a question for me about why the college board decided to give the thing a term and then make it something else.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a phone call, Wendy in Springfield, New Jersey, you're on WNYC with Noliwe Rooks, chair of the Africana Studies Department at Brown University, an author of Cutting School: The Segrenomics of American Education. Hi, Wendy.

Wendy: Hi. I want you to also bring in the prophet motive. These statistics are from Judd, popular Information February 2nd, 2023. In 2019, the college board made over 1.1 billion in revenue. This is documents filed with the IRS, that's where they got the information. Now, half of this came from AP and instruction, and 40% came from assessments like SAT exam.

Now, in 2020 it shrunk, the revenue shrunk to $800 million. What happened was now only 4% of schools require the SAT, 55%, what it was before, requires them now only 4%. In order to make money, they have to please the people who want changes in the AP, if they're going to make money and their CEOs, their compensation went up. Where are they going to get the money? Except by diluting the African American studies AP.

Brian Lehrer: Wendy, thank you very much. I should mention before we even get an answer from Professor Rooks, a response to that, that, tell me if you think I'm characterizing your book fairly, but I think Cutting School is very much about profit and privatization and business motives in education in the United States. I think her question is very relevant to the heart of your expertise.

Noliwe Rooks: Yes, thank you for that. In the book that I wrote, I really explore the profit motives around different kinds of educational interventions and profit motives that we really don't completely see very often, but that are yielding all kinds of money for businesses and organizations that say, we have a way to educate children of color. We have a way to educate children who are segregated.

We don't have to mess around with reforming poverty, reforming segregation, doing better schools, we have a silver bullet. In the conversation I've heard people say, now this I have not researched and done a deep dive into, so I'm going to repeat what I've heard. That makes sense to me, however, again, not independent research, I've heard people say that that part of the conversation that was taking place with some folks who were a part of putting this together really was that this was an opportunity to expand the schools and numbers of students who would be taking an AP class.

Again, it's 2020, students are very interested in things like prison abolition. You're hearing Michelle Alexander's book, The New Jim Crow had been around for a while then people were really starting to think about the relationship to incarceration in the carceral state and schools and prisons. They were talking about reparations, is there a universal thing which the United States actually owes some cash response to Black people for the systemic violations that they have suffered.

All of this is in the air at the same time that the college board's profits are starting to shrink some and African American studies as it is initially conceived where it's going to be talking about these movements, it's going to be talking about queer lives, Black lives trans lives, and was seen as really speaking to the times. There are some scholars that I've talked to, again, not my original research, who said that was very much a part of.

We're going to seize the time of this business saying, we can come up with a way to revive our product and also speak to what seems to be a real hunger, and here, I think is key on the part of middle-class white students who are really a part of. Very often what you see when you when people talk about Black Lives Matter, prison abolition, you see the leadership, which is overwhelmingly Black and queer, Black female, and queer of those movements. There were a lot of middle-class white kids who were also like, "Hey, what is this? I didn't even know this was happening, I would be a part of this."

Brian Lehrer: You dismiss, therefore, what the college board would say, I'm sure is, their essential motivation for adding this course at this time. Well, first you said that it was in development for 10 years, but adding it in response to the murder of George Floyd that they're trying to be responsive to something that's important to do in the country. Maybe they're feeling the pressure on, or let's say economic opportunity on the one hand to create the pilot course with all these things included. On the other hand, now they feel the pressure the other way to exclude them if it's going to be widely adopted. That they're also, that this is, and I think they're a non-profit organization not the college board, that they're trying to do something important.

Noliwe Rooks: Yes. Of course, the NFL is also a non-profit organization, but nonprofit, it doesn't mean-

Brian Lehrer: Not the company, it's just the league, but yes.

Noliwe Rooks: Yes, [laughs], but it's not that you've taken a vow poverty, nonprofits can actually be very wealthy. Entities, I don't know what the initial motivation was. I don't know in those kinds of that clearly, I do think that it's a smart business move, which is what, and I'm not horrified at the idea that businesses are here to make money and make decisions that are about their profit. I'm a realist about that. If there's a niche, if there's numbers of students who would be interested in taking these classes and you can put them together, why not? Why not give it a try? I think, again, the mood of the country, the politics of the country shifted from point A to point B.

Some of, including what was being called for, what was being imagined as new and interesting and brave to put forward became more and more of an impossibility as across. I don't know, I'm not sure you could teach it in New Hampshire and I'm talking about states that are really being very specific about what they don't, what they consider this term woke, which is become this big catch-all, almost like critical race theory.

It's just anything that's asking you to see how power works anything and whatever it is that they want to put in there as a stand-in is really what woke now means. Then they've added in this idea that to talk about sexuality or gender identity is attempting to groom students. This is some new term to explore topics with students. Now has become all the teachers want all of the students to be gay or to, I don't, I honestly can't fully follow the reasoning to any logical conclusion

Brian Lehrer: I want to play. Well, no, you know what, we have to take a break. We're going to take a break right now and then we're going to come back and finish up with Dr. Noliwe Rooks, Chair of Africana studies at Brown on this whole controversy around the college board, AP African-American Studies chorus, the pilot program that's been in 60 schools, thes school year, and the changes that appear to many people to have watered down the course now in its final version, that'll be nationally distributed for political purposes because of political pressure from the right, from Ron DeSantis and others.

When we come back from the break, Professor Rooks, I'm going to play couple of clips that might surprise people of an explicitly indoctrinating curriculum, an explicit attempt to use a curriculum to indoctrinate people, which is DeSantis' charge here, that comes from the other side. Stay with us.

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Brian Lehrer on WNYC, as we continue to talk about the controversial College Board AP African American Studies course, controversial to some people in its pilot version, controversial to other people in its revised version, they say it's watered down. The charge from the right was, in part, that it was indoctrination, not just education. Here's an example of indoctrination in education that comes from the other side and is really explicit. During the 2020 presidential campaign, President Trump running for reelection proposed a framework for teaching American history. Listen.

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President Trump: Under our leadership, the National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded a grant to support the development of a pro-American curriculum that celebrates the truth about our nation's great history.

[end of audio playback]

Brian Lehrer: A little later, he went on to say this.

[start of audio playback]

President Trump: Today I'm also pleased to announce that I will soon sign an executive order, establishing a national commission to promote patriotic education. It will be called the 1776 Commission.

[applause]

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Brian Lehrer: The Trump-friendly crowd loved it and were obviously moved by the mention of 1776, which, of course, he rolls out in contrast to 1619. Teaching patriotism means teaching to an emotional conclusion. Doesn't a professor that this country's history is something to be proud of? Would you say the opposite of that should be taught or that history should be about truth and feelings like patriotism or disdain, either way, should not be predetermined goals?

Noliwe Rooks: There's so many people, I wish I had it off the top of my head. I could just spout who has said these things. Being a patriot requires you to know and understand your country fully, to be able to represent it, to be able to stand up, stand tall. Stand proud is as much about history as it is about civics and teaching patriotism for some really does mean a very particular view of who America is, what it's been, how it developed, who mattered in it, and a debate over what do we teach the next generation?

The real split here is between do you teach a story that is only triumphant, that's about a rise, that has crescendos and fireworks. It's a relentless march from beginning to present with no missteps, nothing worth questioning or do you teach a full history? Do you still feel that that full history makes you American, makes you patriotic? There are many of us that feel that, one, the courage to teach it, the clarity of the necessity of teaching it.

The reason to teach that full history is really because it will help us identify the roads that we've gone down in the past that have not served our nation well and correct them before we make those same mistakes. I believe that teaching this watered-down history that's based on banned concepts, banned books, banned groups of people, and forcing everyone to only accept what the federal government in Trump's utterances tell you. It is in your best interest to know.

I'm always going to think that more information is better than less. That the thing that we need, which is what the AP will say, that this is what it's about. What we need is a nation of people who know how to critically engage information, not do your own specific research, have your own facts, and reach your own conclusions, but what are the tools that you need to rigorously and honestly engage information in people who you may not agree with. They may not look like you, they may make you uncomfortable.

The AP was designed at least as you're looking at the past in the United States or in world history or wherever to give young people the tools to understand fully and on those principles that the AP was founded on and that I think we're facing some challenges despite the fact that the former president isn't in office.

The 1776 commission is not actually a thing. You have governors all over saying what we need is civics education, teaching, just that thing that former President Trump was talking about and we need patriotic. Ron DeSantis has also rolled out a curriculum that's about patriotic education. These are the issues and concerns again that we really as a nation need to be paying attention to.

Brian Lehrer: One more call and we're going to get a Florida take on all this from Bob in Palm Beach County. Bob, you're on WNYC. Hello from New York.

Bob: Hello, Brian. Hello, professor. How are you all today? Thank you. I'm actually certified to teach social science in Florida. I've decided not to do it because they have offered a bonus if you take a course that basically recast American history as far as I learned it, as far as I understand it. The other thing that's serious is that because the Stop WOKE Act has not been specific about what types of books are intended to be banned, except you can still in this in this county, you can show the 1619 project on your shelf, but you can't direct children to it.

It's a very serious thing that's happening. People are not really sure what they should do and that's one of the problems is that if the law is going to self-censor you, then things that may be of value and may be allowed or not going to be given to the children, but on a high line, we do teach Holocaust and I'll call them Black children with a capital B, because they come from all around the world, Caribbean, American, United States, in teaching the Holocaust.

Some of them said, didn't the Americans do that to us too? We were talking about book banning and so on and so forth. They're aware and the governor is not going to stop them from being woke. He's going to shut up the adults, but the children are getting the message. That's what I want to tell you.

Brian Lehrer: Bob, thank you very much. As we run out of time, Professor Rooks, you can respond to Bob in any way that you want and I'm curious to get your opinion on the new now national, about to be national version of the AP Black Studies course. Whether you think it's still worth taking despite your objections to what's been taken out compared to the pilot course or is it just too tainted now and you'd rather people don't take it or they dispense with it all together?

Noliwe Rooks: Thank you for having me. Let me say to wrap up, as I just recently said, I'm always one for explore more, not less. It's not the perfect course for African American studies. It's pretty darn good for African American history. If I have a quibble, it's with you named it something and then started taking things out to turn it into something else. Take the class. I teach students. I just asked my students last week how many in their 50 students in the class got to Brown University through taking AP courses in their schools and 80% to 90% I think, of students raise their hands.

As we were, however, discussing topics teaching about racism and education in American history, they will tell you they don't know this information that we're talking about, how these systems work, what was excluded, different ways of looking at the world. This class would help them. They would help them, they would bring them to schools like those that I teach at with a higher level of knowledge. I don't think it's too tainted. I don't think that it's unworthy. I think though that the whole controversy is one that the whole country needs to pay a lot of attention to.

Brian Lehrer: I'm glad you are paying attention to it. You shared your insights with us. Professor Noliwe Rooks, Chair of the Africana Studies Department at Brown University and founder of what she calls the Segrenomics Lab. I said we were going to get into that vocabulary word and we really didn't, but I guess very briefly that it's pretty clear from the subtitle of your book what the context is there, Cutting School: The Segrenomics of American Education. You want to do 15 seconds?

Noliwe Rooks: Segrenomics is a mashup of segregation and economics, and it is a lens for understanding how when you follow the money, you understand American education quite differently.

Brian Lehrer: Professor Rooks, thanks again so much.

 

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