Lack of Applicants Cancels AP World History

AP World History has been canceled for the 2019/20 school year due to lack of applicants. 

After many years of being a popular course, having over 300k students from all around the world take the course in 2018, Ranking #7 among all AP classes that same year. Other classes present in TCS such as AP Physics 1, Chemistry and Environmental science rank lower than APWH.  At TCS, this superfluous amount of students is non-existent. Schuler, the AP World History teacher during the 2018-19 school year, described how the course is crucial for any student’s learning career.

“History is important. We study history for analysis and argumentation. We learn to understand our role today and not repeat the mistakes of the past,” Schuler said. 

Even though AP classes are known to be challenging, Schuler feels that APWH specifically is a class in which students should know what they are getting into, since the subject requires a substantial amount of knowledge from the start.

“… I think one of the major reasons why people didn’t take the course was because I told it like it is, I kind of didn’t really sell it, I didn’t want the course to go over students ́ heads,” Schuler said. 

However, math-related courses such as AP Calculus and AP Physics have had many students enroll every year. Even though many people define math as a “hard subject,” most students at TCS still prioritize math over any other type of class. 

 “I think it’s because of their future pathways. People enter math courses because of their business and engineering interests, so they learn math to be good at that,” Schuler said.

Math related classes can teach several everyday skills such as problem solving, finances, cooking, etc. In spite of this, some students set themselves to focus more on subjects that are not related to mathematics. 

“I was hoping I would take AP World History in my senior year because I really enjoyed history in 9th grade. My sister took the course in the past and she really enjoyed it,” Alejandro Escobar, 12th Grade TCS student, said.

AP Physics C, a heavy math related course, started with only two students enrolled for the class. Meanwhile, APWH was canceled because its only student was Escobar. 

“I was really disappointed. I don’t understand why people didn’t want to join. I think a lot of people in the school like the humanities,” Escobar said.

APWH will still be an option next year. However, the class difficulty and the TCS students’ priority on business may put the course’s future in jeopardy.

“I’m concerned more on how people are only focusing on one type of job. What about everything else? I am concerned for a society that only focuses on one thing. We need variety for a better future,” Schuler said.