Samia AbouAkar is a sophomore at . She plans to study international relations and foreign affairs at LSU, Georgetown or Tulane as she prepares to become an international leader.
She’s active in her school’s Beta Key Club, volunteers with the St. Sharbel Maronite Church youth group, and works part-time at Raising Canes. It's not enough. She wants to learn more.
That’s why she took Advanced Placement Human Geography as a freshman. As a sophomore, that’s why she’s taking three AP courses: Comparative Government, Comparative U.S. Government and Politics — and African American Studies.
Since she moved to the United States from Chekka, Lebanon, she has wanted to know more about her new country, especially the African American experience.
“You’d be shocked what we’re learning that other people don’t know,” she told me after school recently. “AP African American history is a part of American history, and we all should know more than we do.”
Samia AbouAkar moved from Lebanon to Louisiana. She wants to learn more about her new country, including the African American experience. She's taking the College Board AP African American Studies course at Baton Rouge Magnet High School in spring 2023.
Courtesty of Samia AbouAkar family
The College Board, the nonprofit organization that determines our levels of learning and smarts based on SAT testing, provides nationally recognized advanced placement courses high school students can take to add more rigor to their academic curriculum — and to get early college credit.
The College Board's African American Studies course has faced a lot of pushback since it was announced Feb. 1. The board said it developed the course during the last decade and completed the framework before the end of 2022 — before Florida officials began fighting it in January. for some important changes that leave out prominent scholars and writers such as Kimberlé Crenshaw, one of the founders of a law-school course called critical race theory; Black Lives Matter movement-specific lessons; and the study of reparations. The board insists that's not true.
AbouAkar attends one of the 60 schools piloting the course. BRMHS Principal Nan McCann got a College Board query about the course last year and decided to make it part of the stable of AP courses her school offers. AP courses, she said, are “part of our culture.”
McCann has been at the school for 21 years. When she arrived, the school offered 11 AP courses. Today it offers 32 — including art history, chemistry, computer science, music theory, physics and Spanish literature. The most popular AP courses cover well-established topics, such as Human Geography (330 students), U.S. History (239), World History (257) and English Language (121). The new AP African American Studies course was scheduled to have one class this semester, but so many students wanted to take it that there are two sections with a total of 60 students.
If AbouAkar or any other Baton Rouge Magnet High student takes enough AP courses, that student could enter college as a junior. That's a big savings.
Some of the school's students have taken a similar African American studies course with Emmitt Glynn. He recently attended a course training program at Howard University and a course launch event at the National Museum of African American History & Culture in Washington, D.C. Separate from his school teaching job, he's an educational consultant. He teaches teachers how to teach African American history. He knows the subject more than most.
Glynn wishes more people understood that he and educators across the nation worked with the College Board and each other to fine-tune the course before it was launched, and they continue to work on it. "It's a selective course," he said. "You don't have to take it." Plus, he added, it's a pilot.
Unfortunately, with so much course criticism and controversy, he's afraid that some interested students will shy away from the class. One student asked him whether the course would be offered next year. Others wonder if they’ll ever have that opportunity.
McCann said her school has 19 presidential scholar candidates. They are strong candidates in part because of the rigor they get in AP courses.
We all learn to think critically when we fearlessly encounter challenging — even disturbing — truths about government, politics and history. Our students deserve an honest and comprehensive African American Studies course like the one Glynn teaches.
For the sake of giving our high school students the best education possible, I hope we listen to AbouAkar and let more students learn more about our nation — as we do the same.