Welcome to AP United States Government & Politics
AP U.S. Government and Politics provides a college-level, nonpartisan introduction to key political concepts, ideas, institutions, policies, interactions, roles, and behaviors that characterize the constitutional system and political culture of the United States. Students will study U.S. foundational documents, Supreme Court decisions, and other texts and visuals to gain an understanding of the relationships and interactions among political institutions, processes, and behaviors. They will also engage in disciplinary practices that require them to read and interpret data, make comparisons and applications, and develop evidence-based arguments. In addition, they will complete a political science research or applied civics project.
AP U.S. Government and Politics offers students the opportunity to see how individuals and their ideas can shape the world in which they live; it invites them to explore central questions of liberty and justice in practice. The Supreme Court opinions explored in this course... represent real choices and decisions with enormous consequences. We aim for students to read them and discuss them with openness and insight. The ideas at the heart of the American Founding remain as vital and urgent as they were more than 200 years ago; it is our task as educators to make them vivid once more.
There are five main principles of this course:
(AP U.S. Government and Politics Course and Exam Description, The College Board 2018)
AP U.S. Government and Politics offers students the opportunity to see how individuals and their ideas can shape the world in which they live; it invites them to explore central questions of liberty and justice in practice. The Supreme Court opinions explored in this course... represent real choices and decisions with enormous consequences. We aim for students to read them and discuss them with openness and insight. The ideas at the heart of the American Founding remain as vital and urgent as they were more than 200 years ago; it is our task as educators to make them vivid once more.
There are five main principles of this course:
- Command of the Constitution lies at the center of this course, the touchstone for informed citizenship and scholarship.
- Students are not spectators but analysts; they must analyze the documents and debates that formed our republic and animate public life today.
- Knowledge matters; we define a focused body of shared knowledge while leaving room for the variety of state standards and the imaginations of individual teachers.
- We can’t avoid difficult topics, but we can insist on a principled attention to the best arguments on both sides as students read and write.
- Civic knowledge is every student’s right and responsibility; we therefore have the obligation to make the best learning resources
(AP U.S. Government and Politics Course and Exam Description, The College Board 2018)
© Rachel Juarez 2014 All pictures, not stock, © Rachel Juarez 2009 |
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