Peter Wood explains in a Federalist column how history seems to be repeating itself (my bad joke, not his) when it comes to the College Board’s treatment of European history.

The American Enterprise Institute’s Frederick Hess and Grant Addison writing at National Review Online give the National Association of Scholars (NAS) credit for pointing out flaws in the College Board’s Advanced Placement European History (APEH) framework. But Hess and Addison are concerned that, after the College Board responded to our critique by making changes, NAS has continued to find significant fault with APEH.

This is familiar territory. A few years ago, NAS drew national attention to flaws in the College Board’s premiere AP framework, the one for U.S. history (APUSH). …

… The same question floats like a dark cloud over the AP European History curriculum. It was launched in fall 2015 and embodied the same biases as the 2013 APUSH. My colleague David Randall captured the spirit of those biases when he observed that College Board’s conception of a year-long course in European history found no room to mention the contributions of either Christopher Columbus or Winston Churchill.

Once again, the College Board heard us and proceeded to make changes. They found some room for Churchill. None, alas, for Columbus. That omission is all the stranger in view of the College Board’s emphasis on the colonial enterprises of European nations. …

… First, APEH treats European history starting in 1450. The cut-off date is at one level understandable. No single high school course can cover everything. But in this case, APEH leaves all of the classical world and the Middle Ages in obscurity. The Europe that APEH studies is a Europe without Homer, Plato, Virgil, Cicero, Augustine, Aquinas, and Dante. The course begins during the Renaissance, which was a “rebirth” of something or other. It is Europe without Alexander, Caesar Augustus, Constantine, Attila, and Charlemagne.

Note that the standard high school curriculum has no other place for European history prior to 1450, except as a splinter of AP World History, so this truncation of the European past is final.