Florida AP African American Studies teacher explains class curriculum

Gov. Ron DeSantis says the AP African American Studies curriculum lacks educational value, but what does someone who actually teaches the AP class think about it?

On the College Board’s AP website, it says the pilot AP African American Studies class is designed to offer high school students an evidence-based introduction to African American studies. Sixty schools nationwide are participating the in the pilot program.

Among the teachers involved is Louisiana’s Emmitt Glynn III, who teaches the class at Baton Rouge Magnet School. He tells WINK News the parents and students who are involved love it.

“I have African American students, of course; white students; I have Asian American students; I have Muslim American students; I have a very diverse group within my class,” Glynn said.

Glynn says there’s so much interest not because of history, but because of current events.

“I think, with the events that happened with George Floyd and those unfortunate events, actually, and Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, those events, you know, has sparked something in young people to want to know more about where does where do these events fit in the greater history of things that are going on in their lives?”

The class is broken into four units:

• The origin of the African diaspora (meaning the spread of people from their homeland)
• Freedom, enslavement and resistance – slavery to the Civil War
• The practice of freedom – life for African Americans after the Civil War
• Movements and debates – the Civil Rights movement to today

“What we’re doing with this course, we’re looking at all of those different types of histories through the lens of the African experience,” Glynn said. “That’s the only difference. And what did African people experience from a world standpoint?”

Glynn tells WINK he believes students need to learn all of African American history to understand its impact on the world. Experience has taught him that most people think of African American history as starting with slavery.

“If you really look at it, and you know, one of the things in studying this course is studying that early African history and what’s going on there with the African kingdoms and civilizations precolonial,” Glynn said. “We tend to see that slavery itself was a recent phenomenon in the sense of [how] we understand slavery in the Western hemisphere.”

And he sees no danger in students understanding how what happened in Africa and what happened here are forever connected.

“It kind of reminds me of the Great Pyramid when it was built: The architect, he knew when he started off, he had 20 years,” Glynn said. “And he needed about 25,000 people working, and he, you know, figured all this stuff out. So, that’s kind of what we’re doing: We’re all playing our part in delivering this course.”

While Glynn likes the class as it is, the College Board said this week it will continue with changes announced after DeSantis blasted the class. According to the College Board, a development committee is working on changes and will announce the details in the coming weeks.

Florida banned the original class content.