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Gordon Keith Chalmers and the Politics of Advanced Placement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 December 2021

ANN ABRAMS
ANN ABRAMS*
Affiliation:
New York City Department of Education. Email: [email protected].
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Abstract

This article investigates the role of mid-century conservatism in shaping the College Board's Advanced Placement program. Kenyon president Gordon Keith Chalmers and superintendent of New Trier public schools William Cornog, who led the committee that directly gave rise to the AP Program, understood themselves as classically liberal but socially conservative, and their proposed program was rooted in principles associated with that movement. In keeping with other mid-century conservative thinkers, they promoted humanistic inquiry that introduced all American students, regardless of backgrounds, to the notion of individual freedom, in spaces set apart from economic activity. This article explains that Chalmers and Cornog agreed that schools should focus on reinforcing and transmitting a distinctly American heritage of constitutionalism, individualism, and universal morality by way of the liberal arts. The article ends by establishing how this ideological framing contradicts the Advanced Placement program's current shape.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 56 , Issue 3 , July 2022 , pp. 400 - 423
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press in association with the British Association for American Studies

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43 School and College Study of Admission with Advanced Standing, College Admission with Advanced Standing: Announcement and Bulletin of Information, 1954, http://books.google.com/books?id=kkMtAQAAMAAJ , 7.

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60 William H. Cornog, “Initiating an Educational Program.”

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70 College Board, “English Language and Composition Course Description” (2014), at https://secure-media.collegeboard.org/digitalServices/pdf/ap/ap-english-language-and-composition-course-description.pdf.

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