Here is what a AP English curriculum looks like at a equity-focused public school. Longest three units with readings listed (I also have the whole thing but can't figure out how to copy and paste it here. If someone could provide advice, I'll post it).
My thoughts: while each of these texts is probably great, the collection of them sure does give the appearance of a curriculum designed to push one particular poltical point of view. One could be forgiven for saying that one goal here is to produce progressive activists (which was, at one point, written into an Illinois bill but was then changed). I don't think public schools should have that as a goal (nor should they be trying to turn out conservative activists or any kind of activists at all). Also remember, this is English. I think we can be confident that the same message is being delivered in history classes and elsewhere, with little balance from other perspectives:
Unit 1 texts: Education and Intro to course: 6 weeks
- A talk to teachers – James Baldwin
On Education – Ralph Waldo Emerson
- The Case Against Grades – Alphie Kohn
- Pedagogy of the Oppressed – Paulo Friere
- Why Students Should Choose their own books
Unit 3 Texts: Intro to Rhetoric and Race 8-10 Weeks
Inaugural address – JFK
Various Commercials, various editorials
Letter from Birmingham Jail – MLK
You want a Confederate monument? My body is a Confederate Monument – Caroline Randal Williams
Excerpts from the 1619 project
Let America be America again – Langston Hughes
This is America – Childish Gambino
The Narrative of the life of Fredrick Douglas
What to the Slave is the Forth of July
Unit 6 Texts: Argument continued and concurrent with research 10 Weeks
Freakonomics
Professor for Women – Virginia Wolfe
Being a man – Paul Theroux
Crazy Nike ad
Always be Optimizing and I Thee Dread Jia Tolentino
Various articles