Just 48 hours before the first day of school, the Arkansas Department of Education announced that Advanced Placement African American Studies wouldn't count towards graduation. They said they’re reviewing the course for possible indoctrination.
Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders went on Fox News to explain her administration's decision to de-prioritize AP African American studies.
“We cannot perpetuate a lie to our students, and push this propaganda leftist agenda, teaching our kids to hate America, and hate one another," she said.
Sanders has not pointed to anything specific in the AP African American Studies curriculum. The Arkansas Department of Education notified teachers that they’d deleted the course code for AP African American Studies. That means students can’t get graduation credit for taking it.
I'm kinda surprised Arkansas ever allowed AP African American studies. I've been to Arkansas a few times. It is a dark and terrible place decades from any possible level of redemption. It's like stepping through a time machine that goes even further back outside the "major" cities.
Maybe they'll go through their own version of the 60s civil rights movement in like another 50 years and can join the modern world. There's vast swathes of the state that barely have Internet and cell service. It's wild out there. Surprisingly few Walmarts and lots of small town independent or employee owned grocery stores though weirdly.
They didn't. This was a pilot program being tested in 6 schools statewide to determine if it would be offered to a wider audience, and the governor went out of her way to kill it before it could even get started.