Just like Harry Potter led an underground Defense Against The Dark Arts class at one point, students need to go rogue and create underground "What Really Happened" History classes for themselves.

The country-club Republicans keep their base as stupid and frightened as possible while they themselves send their kids to private schools, where they get all the education they need to take their places in the business elite.

Oklahoma's got some history of its own, that I could see why some folks would want to keep under wraps. Start with the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921, when the white community rose up against the black, and burned their commercial district to the ground: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_…

Or hell, go back to the Land Rush, or all the way to the Trail of Tears.

The thingy says there's a comment, but when I click on it I see no comments. It'll be neat when all these bugs are ironed out. Also, you should consider either expanding the number of posts that display on the main Slog page or unmerging the lineout from the Slog Classic. So few posts to hold our attention anymore.

America, love it or love it.

Whatever. At the rate they're tearing away through their subsurface with oil fracking, the entire state is bound to collapse into a 100 mile-wide sinkhole any minute now.

Yes, we should be steadfastly proud of every aspect of US history. Like slavery.

it's not the fucking bible, it's just history. facts.

the thing is that America ISN'T "bad", it just consistently fails to live up to it's lofty rhetoric. kids need to know that everyone else knows it's bullshit too - I was less disillusioned after reading Zinn.

@6, slavery was there to help the slaves. This is an actual thing that crypto-klansman wingnuts believe. Printed in official school textbooks, even, probably in Oklahoma.

Oklahoma is what's bad about America.

Along with Kansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, South Carolina, Arizona, Tennessee, Virginia, Arkansas, Georgia, West Virginia, and worst of all, Texas, they can all go back to the UnioOklahoma is what's bad about America.

Along with Kansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, South Carolina, Arizona, Tennessee, Virginia, Arkansas, Georgia, West Virginia, and worst of all, Texas, they can all go back to the Confederacy as far as I'm concerned. Secede. Please. The sooner the better.

They have a special interest in keeping people dumb, as they don't want them to know that they can live someplace other than Oklahona.

What happened there?!

The very concept that these partisan hacks could interfere with school curriculum is offensive.

'American exceptionalism' doesn't mean that America never does anything wrong. It means that we aspire to a higher standard to which we must hold ourselves as a nation. The crimes and missteps of the past must be acknowledged and understood in order that they not be repeated; that is widely known and well understood.

This action is taken by a party that wants to dismantle unions, so they'd rather that people not know the extent to which workers today owe their current protections to the advocacy of the unions of yesteryear. It's a party that would happily round up Muslims and lock them away as a perceived threat to America, so they don't want people reminded of what an abhorrent mess it was when we did it to the issei and nisei. It's a party that wants to reduce the Founding Fathers to a passel of cardboard cutouts standing only for what the current party line draws on, so they're happy to write out of the history books any stances that might be more in line with the positions of the Democrats.

These people are, in my opinion, scum unworthy of public office.

And future employers will make note of where the applicants were educated. I for one have no interest in trying to "retrain" someone who was consistently fed absolute nonsense. Give me a northwesterner any day.

@18

It's quaint to tell yourself that there's a job that demands an accurate knowledge of history. Would some insurance company or hospital chain give a shit if you knew any history? Would Apple or Facebook? Fuck no. Who then?
Maybe it would matter if the job is history teacher -- but if it's history teacher anywhere in the former Confederacy, you're all set! So the sad ending to this sad episode is that this is harmless. Oh, but they'll vote for assholes if they don't get taught proper history, won't they? Well every generation of students up to now has had proper history, supposedly. And look who Oklahoma votes for.

God will smite Oklahoma with tornados this Spring as retribution for this stupid act.

Is there any chance that the American voting public has had enough of the republican propaganda machine? Wouldn't it be wonderful if the 2016 elections were so overwhelmingly Democrat leaning that the "stupid" party just gave up and admitted they were wrong? Long shot but we all have our dreams.

I just finished going through voir dire as a potential juror. I was one of the last juror's questioned so I sat through the questioning of approximately 30 other potential jurors. The stupidity of the average American is stunning.

Who cares about White Oklahoma? In 50 years they will literally have their heads in the sand. And the rest of their bodies; in an underground lair to escape the parched soil above and the toxic aquifers below.

Is America really 'balkanizing'? Is this what is happening?

This is the perfect example of the most profound difference between conservative & liberal values.

@2 Just some trivia, that race riot was the first live bombing run performed by the Army Air Corp. They bombed the black neighborhood.

Chris Rock is right, blacks aren't "advancing", white people are just getting less homicidal and insane.

Dumbening? Anyone?

Kids will now never hear the real story of how the Thunder came to Oklahoma City.

Conservatism is at its root about not advancing. It is about stopping the advance of ethics, knowledge, and thought, to keep society in stasis which benefits the people already in charge. So of course conservatives would be anti-education. They basically have to be.

I am a teacher, and I am no fan of AP. Slavish devotion to AP benefits College Board (a private corporation) far more than it does individual students. That said, as little as I like AP, I prefer that curriculum decisions be made by teachers and educators rather than legislators.

@19 Knowledge of American History is not usually a job requirement, but critical thinking skills are. It's hard for students to think critically if they are fed a steady diet of "America is great, and the world was created in six days just like the bible says," Which is where conservative lawmakers often seem to be headed.

@22 Not to mention the stupidity of most lawyers. The last time I was interviewed for a jury the prosecutor asked me if I was a conscientious objector from gun ownership. That was too much even for the judge, who interrupted to say there was no such thing.

I was ok until I read @33. These people are in our courts now, arguing law. With licenses to do so. Painful.

Catalina (@12) is onto something, but I don't think it's a cause & effect thing. This move makes perfect sense from not only a social perspective, but simply from a fiscal one. The only people who would be eligible for AP courses are probably going to leave the state at the first opportunity anyway. AP courses for Oklahomans are a terrible investment from the state's point of view. Unlike Haitians, Mexicans, or other emigrants who support relatives back home, I doubt a single ex-Oklahoman sends a penny back to that shithole of a state.

AP U.S. History doesn't only teach what's bad about America! It teaches good and bad both!! I took APUS in high school and I teach its equivalent to college students and only a rotten teacher would 1) only teach the bad stuff or 2) ignore the bad stuff because heck is there a lot of it. American Indians, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, slavery, civil rights, suffrage, the fact that no one thought a republic could ever work in an area as big as the thirteen colonies and it did anyway and how we managed it. We need to know it all.