As Cal High’s newly introduced AP World History class is added to more schedules, the number of students taking AP European History has dwindled, raising questions about changes in course scheduling and logistics for the 2024-25 school year.
A decrease in AP European History students is primarily because of a new decision facing rising sophomores: taking regular World History, Global Studies World History, or one of the two AP classes.
More rising sophomores have selected AP World History, than AP European History for the upcoming school year, AP U.S History teacher Daniel Sweetnam said. Sweetnam said enough students signed up for him to teach six periods of AP World History with at least 30 students per class.
The AP European History classes are taught by Chris Doherty and Ryan Anderson, who estimates only two or three periods of the class will be offered next year. He said 60-90 students signed up.
There may be another AP World History teacher because of the overwhelming number of students who signed up for the course. Sweetnam said the school is still in the process of planning to solve this problem.
The AP World History course aims to assess the global repercussions of various events and human migration, adopting a more global perspective, according to the College Board.
AP European History’s focus is devoted to the evolution of religion, economy, politics, and society in Europe. The course covers events that originated or revolved around Europe. It doesn’t cover global effects of these European events, unlike AP World History.
AP World History has been offered by the College Board for 22 years, and it is already offered at Dougherty Valley and Monte Vista high schools.
Many students are choosing AP World History for a new perspective that covers the whole world rather than a single part of it.
“Throughout my years at school, my history classes and lessons have been centered on Europe,” said freshman Siona Saurabh, who signed up to take AP World History in the fall. “I thought it would give a new perspective and allow me to learn about history that isn’t covered in the usual curriculum.”
Saurabh said AP World History combines the advanced academic nature of AP courses with the diversity of topics covered in word history classes.
Saurabh has personally experienced a prominent focus revolving around European history in middle and elementary school history courses and said that she was eager to learn a more diverse set of topics that are more big-pictured than the topics covered in European history. She strives to learn about events that happened outside of Europe as well as the global implications of them.
But some students, such as freshman Aashna Singh, want to indulge in learning in-depth about one specific topic rather than a variety of topics. Singh, who signed up to take AP European History in the fall, said students who strive to focus on one specific topic would be better off in AP European History.
“I chose European history because I like learning about a specific topic rather than a large variety of topics like World History,” Singh said.
AP European History requires students to have a deeper understanding of specific topics over more generalized topics.Singh said that learning about one topic rather than multiple topics could be beneficial to students who want to learn more detailed and in-depth history.
While both courses have their advantages and disadvantages, what could be turning students to AP World History is the belief of a smaller workload with the course. Because AP World has more generalized topics covering many countries at a superficial level, students believe that it would be easier to understand.
“I think most students are under the impression that [AP World History] is easier,” Doherty said. “It’s not. Looking at the national test scores, [AP World History] is relatively the same in difficulty and student success rates.”
Doherty said AP World History may even be slightly harder than AP European History because of the range of topics covered. Saurabh said she signed up for AP World History for this reason, hearing from upperclassmen who had taken AP European History that the course had a lot of homework.
Another reason students could be choosing AP World History over AP European History could simply be because it’s a new course. For years, the only AP History option offered for Cal sophomores was AP European History.
