Dear Georgia legislators,

This year, the College Board altered its curriculum for AP U.S. History to include an evaluation factor called synthesis, something that has caused controversy throughout the nation. Synthesis requires AP U.S. History students like myself to relate what they’ve learned in class to real life, present or past.  When students make this connection, they become independent thinkers who are truly able to learn from history. In the new AP U.S. History class, scholars are expected to take facts and draw relationships, patterns and conclusions from them.

The problem with synthesis, however, is that it requires American history to be taught in an unbiased manner, so that students can form their own interpretations of the facts. Synthesis requires that teachers fairly represent the good, the bad and the controversial parts of American history. This balanced approach has angered many parents, teachers and students who fear that revealing the flaws of American history dishonors the nation. On Feb. 17, the legislature of Oklahoma passed a resolution declaring that its state will cut AP U.S. History from the AP program if the curriculum is not changed. Following suit, the Georgia Senate has passed a similar resolution demanding that the College Board revise the course. I urge my state’s House to vote no on the Senate resolution. I believe that Americans criticizing the new curriculum confuse being objective with being unpatriotic. Teaching the truth about atrocities—like the enslavement of African-Americans and the Trail of Tears, controversies like Hiroshima and the Mexican-American War and victories like the black civil rights movement and the creation of the Bill of Rights—is the key to creating insightful, intelligent and innovative students. I believe that teaching “unpatriotic” facts about America’s mistakes is our best chance at never repeating them again. When students learn the reality of Japanese internment during Wolrd Wa II, anti-communist trials and Jim Crow Laws, they are able to recognize similar instances in the modern world and work to prevent them.

Taking pride in one’s country is a beautiful thing, but when patriotism is blinded by one-sided history, the purity of that pride is tainted. I love the America I know, the America I have learned about in AP U.S. History. I want my two younger sisters and their classmates to learn the same unbiased history I have learned in AP U.S. History when they reach high school, so that decades from now, America can be filled with unprejudiced, educated, independent thinkers who can lead us into being the best nation that we can be.

Yours,

Grace Hawkins