Newsweek reports that the College Board has revised AP U.S. history standards in response to complaints last year that “most people when they finish that course, they’d be ready to sign up for ISIS,” and that it presented “a radically revisionist view of American history that emphasizes negative aspects of our nation’s history while omitting or minimizing positive aspects.” One of the changes to the framework, which is supposed to give a very condensed outline of what students will learn in the class — not dictate everything that teachers cover — involved adding a section to the course on “American exceptionalism.” According to Newsweek, the phrase “didn’t appear in the 2014 edition because the organization assumed it wasn’t something it needed to spell out as part of what would be taught in an American history course.”
