Robert Blackey | Advanced Placement European History:An Anatomy of the Essay Examination, 1956-2000 | The History Teacher, 35.3

Advanced Placement European History:An Anatomy of the Essay Examination, 1956-2000

Robert Blackey
California State University, San Bernardino

THE COLLEGE BOARD's Advanced Placement European History examination, like the program it reflects, is akin to a living organism. It has evolved over the course of its first half- century of existence in virtually all respects: the types and subject matter of questions asked (and not asked); the nature of the history those questions reflect; the number of questions both offered and to be answered, as well as how they have been and not been grouped; the time allotted to answer those questions; the way questions have been worded in order to elicit thought-induced responses rather than those based on memorization of facts; and in its sensitivity to issues of class, gender, geography, ethnicity, and matters of faith.¹ This is perhaps the kind of evolution we all can agree on: a reflection of the mixture of change and continuity that characterizes both history itself and the evolution of the survey of European history course. This evolution also reflects how we as teachers and scholars evolve during the course of our careers, all in an effort, one hopes, to do a still better job, to get closer to ever-elusive perfection, to learn from our own history as we would hope our students have learned from the history we teach them.

What follows is an examination of the exam, an anatomization of forty-five years of essay questions (540 such questions in all, with a high per exam of 31 in 1956, to the current seven, which it has been since 1976). My idea is that such an analysis will reveal some useful, if not provocative, characteristics about a program—as well as the discipline of history—in which thousands of secondary school and college/university teachers have invested so heavily.

It is probably fair to say that the essay exam questions we construct as individual teachers tend for the most part to be predictable and not especially creative. After all, with that exam we are preparing to administer only a week or two (or even a day or two) away, and with all the other responsibilities competing for our limited time, few of us have the spare hours and energy to do too much more than the ordinary. Surpassing what is generally so routine, however, are the AP essay questions that are meticulously crafted—typically over a period of two-to-three years—by the dedicated teams of secondary school and university historians who have comprised the test development committees in European History.²To be sure, there are likely to be shortcomings in the finished product in any given year; this essay will sometimes call attention to such flaws. In hindsight, we can often see which questions didn't function according to plan, or how some questions could have been improved, or what subjects and sensibilities were ignored. That said, it is still the contention here that nothing matches the quality, creativity, and variety of questions written under the umbrella of AP European History (APEH). We can all learn from the experience of nearly a half century of essay question writing and careful after-administration analysis.

In the Beginning

The first APEH Examination Committee (as the Test Development Committee was then called) consisted of three college/university professors— Thomas Mendenhall of Yale University, Kenneth Walker of Goucher College, and Henry R. Winkler of Rutgers University³—who were assisted by Elizabeth Kimball (who held a Ph.D. in history) of the Educational Testing Service. That first exam in 1956 —taken by fifty-nine students⁴ and graded by four Readers, one of whom taught at a secondary school—consisted of thirty-one questions divided into two parts. Part A was itself divided into five time periods (1450-1603, 1603-1715, 1715-1815, 1815-1870, 1870- 1939), with each period offering five questions; students were required to answer two questions, both from one period, at a half hour per question. Part B included six questions, one of which was to be answered in the recommended time of one hour; these were broader, often sweeping questions, dealing with issues that cut across countries and centuries, on such issues as balance of power, revolt versus reform, the characterizations given to historical ages, the conflict between church and state, and international systems set up after wars to preserve the peace.

The Examination Committee held that it was important not "to prescribe a rigid and arbitrary curriculum," and that a wide range of courses and approaches existed that might serve as appropriate preparation for the exam; they "deliberately eschewed unusual or experimental material as likely to be unfair to most of the" students. The hope was to offer questions that were sufficiently broad and varied in order to enable "students to use their own particular strengths most effectively," while demanding "a minimum common denominator of general historical knowledge."⁵ Thus the questions that first year, as for most the first fifteen years, covered traditional subject matter, largely classifiable under the rubric of what is now the political/diplomatic theme. For example, "ages" were viewed politically, as the above five chronological periods indicate and when questions were formed around the "Elizabethan era," the "age of Louis XIV," and "between the two world wars." Dates of "turning points" pivoted mostly around wars, revolutions, treaties, and reigns. Where social rank or status were involved, attention was paid to what was accepted as integral to traditional history, such as Renaissance gentlemen, Calvinist theologians, or eighteenth-century philosophes. Religious subjects typically meant aspects of the Reformation. Cultural history was often represented by the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, or Romanticism. Economic history usually covered the Price Revolution, mercantilism, or the Industrial Revolution.

Following that first exam a detailed postmortem was conducted, the results of which were summarized in the annual Chief Reader's Report. Among other things, it was agreed that the exam was "much too difficult for the purposes it is designed to achieve. Its level turned out to be that of perhaps a senior [college] comprehensive....The scope of the questions was often too broad to be handled both from the point of view of the time allotted and from the standpoint of a reasonable expectation of training for school seniors or college freshmen." But the report also concluded that "the exam unquestionably carries out the intention of the Advanced Placement Program in requiring that students of European History go beyond mere accumulation of facts and textbook knowledge and that they exercise critical judgment and show thoughtful interpretation."⁶ Thus, what was recommended for subsequent exams were not "fundamental changes in the nature of the material, but...that the examination should be posed in sharper, more clearly defined terms, and that the time element be given fuller consideration." Although the nature of the exam has, indeed, changed—just as the way history has been perceived has changed—test development committees from the start have been grappling with the problem of how to be comprehensive in coverage while posing questions sharply and clearly. In other words, a posture of critical self-evaluation has characterized the program from the very beginning.

Structural and Format Changes

The initial structure of the exam did not survive the first year without modification. The Readers recommended consolidating the number of periods (which eventually happened in 1961 and then again in 1970) and reducing the number of questions offered within each period.⁷Thus, for 1957 each of the five periods in Part A now presented four questions (down from five) while the number of choices in Part B was reduced from six to three (or a total of twenty-three questions).⁸ With some modifications, this format effectively remained in place through the 1972 exam. There are at least a couple of ways to assess its longevity. First, the format recognized and thus reflected the chronological and geographical breadth of the APEH course and the consequent difficulty for teachers to cover all periods effectively and for students to prepare for all equally well. Thus for Part A, students were instructed to choose "the period of European history in which you consider yourself best prepared." Second and more cynically, one may see the requirement to choose two questions in Part A from the same period as inadvertently signalling a teaching/test-taking strategy that encouraged a great deal of attention be focused on one period and less on the others in order to help assure quality work on those two essays. But for students to prepare this way would have been to prepare poorly because Part B typically involved questions requiring students to be familiar with the material from at least two periods, while the multiple-choice portion of the exam required students to be familiar with all periods.

Almost in anticipation of a more significant change the following year, the 1972 exam invited students to choose their two questions in Part A from which ever period or periods they wished. In 1973, the division of essay questions into chronological groups and into two parts was abandoned altogether. The new format presented students with ten questions from which only two had to be answered in the allotted two hours.⁹On national history exams, though, little is written in stone, as would become obvious in time for the 1975 exam.

Following the lead of AP United States (APUS) History (which launched it in 1973), in 1975 APEH entered the age of the Document-Based Question (DBQ).¹⁰ The DBQ appeared as the only required question among the ten offered, with students having to choose one more from the remaining nine. In 1976, the choice was reduced from nine to six, a distribution—one DBQ and six free-response questions (FRQs)—that has remained in place ever since, with but one modification. In 1994 those six FRQs were divided into two groups, with students now required to answer two, with one from each group, a return to a total of three essays as was required from 1956 to 1972. As in the earlier use of grouped questions, the 1994 divisions were chronological, with Group 1 questions covering the period 1450 through the eighteenth century and Group 2 questions covering the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. But such a division was not the case for the exams in the following years. Other patterns might be discerned within any single exam, but collectively they defy prediction, as does most everything else about the content of AP essay questions. For example, in the 1996 exam all Group 1 questions were introduced with the charge to "compare and contrast," while Group 2 questions dealt with things social (roles, groups, and consequences). In 1997, Group 1 questions were concerned with the control of some people by others, whereas those in Group 2 seemed to share nothing in common. There was another chronological division in 1998, but then in 1999 all of Group 1 featured questions built around images (paintings and photographs), although they otherwise shared nothing in common. For the 2000 exam, Group 1 questions focused on political and/or economic themes while those in Group 2 were centered on intellectual and/or social themes.

Course Descriptions and Themes

As the founders of APEH constructed the course description, or "syllabus" as it was often referred to during the early years of the program, their major consideration was "diversity" by which was meant that introductory college courses in European history were different from one another in a way that did not characterize other disciplines. There was no commonly accepted core of material. According to Henry Winkler, some courses began in ancient times or in the Middle Ages, while others concentrated on the period since 1815. "Controversy over 'coverage' and 'penetration,' over 'understanding in depth' versus the 'overview' has raged for many years."¹¹As a result, the early course descriptions were seen to represent a compromise, with the essay section of the exam confined to Europe after 1450.

The course description, conceived and organized chronologically, also included sample topics (the precursor of what is currently itemized under themes) that might be covered in each of the time periods. These topics, as with the terminal dates of each period, were primarily determined according to generally accepted and traditional means of structuring a course in European history. That means that politically-oriented events and phenomena were the driving force, although each period usually included mainline aspects of economic, social, cultural, and intellectual history. For example, topics suggested for the period 1789-1870 were: the French Revolution, Napoleon, and the French imperium; the Concert of Europe; romanticism, liberalism, the conservative reaction; the revolutions of 1848, the impact on liberal nationalism; unification movements; reform movements, English and continental; Socialism, Utopian and Marxian; the industrial transformation of Europe; evolution and mechanism in science and social science. These topics were considered sufficiently broad and varied to accommodate individual courses and to enable students to adapt their strengths to any given exam while demanding from them "a minimum common denominator of general historical knowledge."¹² As part of the compromise that was reached in the development of the course description, that common denominator is what Winkler recently acknowledged as now being "old-fashioned history— political, economic, cultural and social in largely public context."¹³ Clearly, the compromise was over coverage and chronology, not untraditional themes or potentially competing approaches to teaching APEH.¹⁴

Yet however large the AP program has become, however monolithic ETS and the College Board might appear, test development committees have always sought to be responsive to their constituency. Teachers at the first AP conferences, for example, successfully convinced the European history examination committee to make a change, because "to lengthen the time span of the earlier periods [e.g., from 1450-1603 to 1450-1660] would give them greater flexibility in presenting the material of their courses to their students."¹⁵ In 1972, another such conference contributed to more dramatic, even revolutionary, changes. Before turning to them, it would be instructive first to dissect the annual exams in order to determine their character.

Between 1956 and 1972, during which time the traditional APEH course description was in place, political/diplomatic questions predominated; where the remaining questions could certainly be classified as being in the domain of intellectual/cultural and social/economic history¹⁶, they were, as Winkler noted, largely in a "public context." Sometimes questions melded two or more themes. For the 1956 exam, for example, of the twenty-five questions in Part A, nineteen were primarily political/diplomatic, while the six involving other themes addressed some of the traditional components of European history courses: conflicting interpretations about the religious side of the Reformation; the degree to which the Renaissance was a rebirth or an acceleration of tempo; mercantilism as a political and economic doctrine; whether persecution was successful in the seventeenth century; reason as an eighteenth-century yardstick for appraising human institutions; and when the Industrial Revolution might best be said to have begun and why.

From 1956 through the 1972 exam, out of a total of 282 questions offered in Part A, 182 (or 64.5%) were primarily linked to political/diplomatic subjects; the remaining 100 (or 35.5%) mostly concentrated on intellectual/cultural (67 or 23.8%) and social/economic (33 or 11.7%) topics. Questions in Part B followed a similar pattern, but with a difference: they were broader- based, often covering more than one time period or age or region/country; they encouraged students to think more broadly than the way issues are usually treated in textbooks and, perhaps, in class. In that respect, they required students to be creative and to think historically by seeing bigger pictures and more intricate patterns.¹⁷For example, in 1956 the questions concentrated on the idea of world-wide frontiers, turning points, toleration, possession of wealth, balance of power, and the state and society. In 1957 they dealt with Machiavelli's influence on other periods of history, main world problems at the turns of centuries, and the relative value of revolt and reform.

A telling postscript to this domination by traditional questions are a couple from 1957 and 1958 that can be seen as the first social history questions to fall outside the "public context." In those years, one question addressed the relative influence of the mob during the French Revolution versus individuals, ideas, or accident, while another question asked whether the Industrial Revolution substituted the tyranny of the masses for the tyranny of the classes. But it wasn't until the early 1970s that clearer signs suggested that APEH was reflecting shifts in the larger discipline of history. In fact, the way in which the program was being reformulated coincided with the publication of a new generation of Western civilization textbooks that were giving both thorough survey-level coverage and new attention to social, economic, and cultural history more broadly conceived than in what were then the standard texts (especially A History of the Modern World by Palmer and Colton). For example, The Western Experience by Chambers et al. was first published in 1974 and A History of Western Society by McKay, Hill, and Buckler first appeared in 1979.

1970 witnessed the first cultural history question focused entirely on the arts. Although the question dealt with familiar historical periods (classicism and romanticism), students who chose it had to write about one of three pairs of artists (Mozart/Beethoven, David/Delacroix, Pope/Wordsworth) and how the chosen pair were representative of the two periods. This was a noteworthy detour from traditional APEH questions, and although few students chose to answer it, future test development committees would periodically include more like it, along with other less orthodox subject areas. The 1972 exam reflected the existence of additional winds of change and revealed a different kind of shift: although there were still more political/diplomatic- themed questions than either of the other two thematic areas, for the first time the number was only a plurality, not a majority. In fact, that exam was balanced thematically as no previous exam had been.

During the same month the 1972 exam was administered, another AP history conference signalled further changes and challenges. Keynote speaker Charles Keller—historian and first chair of the APUS examination committee—advocated that the history we teach and test should be interdisciplinary and more clearly related to the world around us.¹⁸ The APEH examination committee also considered these issues as it undertook a re-evaluation of goals and methods,¹⁹ with the result that the new course description identified several forthcoming critical changes, the most important of which were that new stress was to be placed on European contacts with other peoples and cultures and that a clear thematic structure was to replace the largely topical/chronological one. And it is this thematic structure—with a few additions and modifications over the years—that has remained as the framework for the APEH course today. (See Appendix 1)

The exam in 1973, the first under the new structure, told the story of these changes both in the format and in the types of questions asked. The grouping of questions into two parts and several chronological periods was discarded in favor of ten essays based upon the new themes, two of which had to be selected by students. There was also a balance among the ten questions: three represented the political/diplomatic theme, three intellectual/cultural, and four social/economic. From the first theme the questions were on the new continental political order between 1815 and 1848; the factors that precipitated the major political revolutions of Europe; and how the defeated states were treated by the victors after 1815 and after 1945. Questions from the second theme dealt with the origins and critics of classical liberalism; Western attitudes toward China and Japan in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; and the novel as a documentary source for historians. For the third theme, questions focused on how European cities were changed by the Industrial Revolution; incentives to economic development between 1650 and 1800; motives for the European penetration of Africa in different time periods; and the social and cultural roles of hereditary aristocracy in the eighteenth century and of totalitarian elite in the twentieth. Thus, the exam reflected the new thematic approach, but in doing so it also included several traditional-style questions for those students prepared along traditional lines, as well as questions that were a combination of the old and the new.²⁰

To conclude this section on course descriptions and themes, let's evaluate how effectively the essay questions from 1973 to 2000 have adhered to the new guidelines. The exams during those twenty-eight years consisted of a total of 205 questions (including DBQs, which were introduced in 1975), of which eighty-two, or 40%, were political/diplomatic, fifty- seven, or 27.8%, were intellectual/cultural, and sixty-six, or 32.2%, were social/economic. These numbers, then, indicate that a far more equitable balance among the themes was achieved than during the initial seventeen years of the exam. Moreover, during fifteen of those thirty- eight years questions in either intellectual/cultural or social/economic history equalled or were greater than those offerings in the political/diplomatic realm; in some years only one or two of the six options among the FRQs were political/diplomatic. But balance did not necessarily signify that all was harmonious among these thematic bedfellows, at least insofar as student responses was concerned.

The new themes and the introduction of the DBQ may have allowed for "more liberal experimentation in course design and teaching strategies," including a wider use of diverse materials—such as novels, art, and readings from other disciplines—and an emphasis on what is involved in historical thinking and methodology.²¹ But actual teaching in the schools across the nation, along with some textbook writing, had not yet caught up with these tectonic shifts within the discipline. For years the majority of students continued to opt to write on those subjects that were more traditional. And where they chose questions on subjects such as demography, social structure, the decline of the aristocracy, urbanization, and work behavior and attitudes toward work, many students did not perform as well. Even when these subjects were eventually covered in most textbooks there was a paucity of the kind of facts, or evidence, or historical signposts around which students usually attempt to build an essay. As often as not, essay responses involved vague or sweeping generalizations. But this was probably to be expected, and there never was a move to return to earlier patterns.

Nonetheless, several complementary solutions might help to improve students' abilities to answer questions reflective of the new history without weakening the presentation of what is so vital about social history. First, textbook authors could give more thought to how they organize and write about social history (and other non-traditional issues), insofar as what students might be expected to learn and, eventually, incorporate into responses to essays on these subjects. Secondly, test development committees, as well as we teachers who compose our own questions, could try to be more creative in how we write and phrase such questions and in what we ask students to do with what they know about this material. Third, as history teachers become aware of these problems faced by students who are learning as well as answering AP questions about social history, they could work—individually and with others—to become more creative in how this theme is taught. Finally, although test development committees have usually checked to see that the newer areas being tested are covered effectively in the most widely used textbooks, those committees must maintain that diligence to ensure that no widely- used text escapes review.

While significant programmatic change is often accompanied by problems—including some that take a long time to resolve—AP has had a powerful impact upon the way history is taught in the schools. In addition, test development committees have used the essay portion of the exam to introduce new and/or recent material (e.g., architecture as a reflection of monarchy or of religious theologies and practices, the Cold War at its height or its end, the economic revival of Western Europe, social activism after World War II) as a way of demonstrating that APEH regularly reflects developments at the college level.²²

Chronological and Geographical Representation

There has been an increasingly conscious effort on the part of APEH test development committees to see that each year's questions, considered collectively, were balanced chronologically (with at least one question covering each century—although at times the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were considered together) and geographically (with at least one question focusing on Central and/or Eastern Europe). Chronological coverage was easy enough, but even with maps in hand committees sometimes lost their sense of testing direction—a problem compounded, if not caused, by the western bias of so much of European history teaching.²³

From 1956 to 1972, when questions were grouped according to chronological periods, there could never be any doubt about such coverage, but starting with the 1973 exam committees have had to pay closer attention to ensuring a balanced chronological coverage. Then, from 1973 to 1976, the start of the course was pushed forward to 1650 in an effort to reflect greater interest in more modern European history; as a result, there were no questions covering the fifteenth, sixteenth, and first half of the seventeenth centuries. But this shift in chronological coverage resulted in protests from significant numbers of teachers who recognized the special value of the Renaissance and Reformation periods for an understanding of modern times, and so by the 1977 exam the starting date was returned to 1450, where it has remained.

If providing questions to cover the span of centuries was never an obstacle, devoting appropriate attention each year to the history of Europe east of the Holy Roman Empire or Germany could be more problematic. Russia and the Soviet Union, not surprisingly, have received the most attention among the essay questions, but even this statement comes with the equivalent of an insurance rider. Although APEH has, for the most part, begun in 1450, there has never been an essay focusing on the period before the reign of Peter the Great, and aside from Peter, the only other pre-1800 figure included has been Catherine the Great.²⁴ Thus, for the most part, test committees have devoted most of their attention to Russian history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Russia has been the only country in eastern Europe regularly tested.

Sometimes there have been questions where students have had the option of picking any European country in order to answer a question, but traditional teaching provides them with more western ammunition. A question on the 1959 exam, on the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, was the first to test students about a central/eastern European country or empire other than Russia. Austria and Central Europe would be included periodically thereafter—once, in 1964, not insignificantly, with a simple map, the first-ever visual in the exam's history. Yet the Balkans would not be included until years later. Another important step toward giving the east its due was a 1961 question on why "Western Europe became industrialized more rapidly than Eastern Europe between 1815 and 1870."²⁵But any way the geography of European history is tested, even with the sustained effort to include questions from beyond the pale, the overwhelming majority of questions have been concentrated on Western Europe. There were years (e.g., 1986, 1988, 1990) when the exam included no such Central/Eastern European questions, which seems to reflect the way modern European history is generally taught.

If Central and Eastern Europe are sometimes lost in the blind spot of the way we study European history, there are a few other countries and areas that are either off the map or marginal to it. In 1968, there was a question offering Gustavus Adolphus as a choice among three participants in the Thirty Years' War, the first and last time any Scandinavian individual or country was mentioned by name in the essay section of the exam. Turkey and Greece are similarly absent, while the Balkans (in a 1998 question) was saved from testing oblivion by current events, although the region had been incorporated into the 1992 DBQ on nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Pan Slavism. The first and only time Poland was the subject of an essay question was in 1996. Portuguese history has been ignored, except for the extent to which it has been a part of questions on the age of exploration. Focus on the Netherlands has been limited to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Italian history, naturally, is a major part of the Renaissance, but then is otherwise absent until nineteenth-century unification and the age of Fascism and Mussolini. Spanish history is likewise limited to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, excepting one FRQ (1958) and one DBQ (1990) on the Spanish Civil War. In contrast, virtually the full chronological stretch of the histories of England/Britain (along with Ireland rarely, but never Scotland or Wales), France, and the Holy Roman Empire/Prussia/Germany have comprised the majority of APEH essay questions, which again calls attention to traditional biases in the way modern European history is taught.

There is a final geographically-related observation to make. As noted above, the dramatic changes that were made to APEH starting in 1972 called for new stress to be placed on European contacts with other peoples and cultures. Prior to that time only two essay questions had addressed that issue.²⁶ Then, on four of the six exams between 1973 and 1978, there were several such questions.²⁷As it developed, however, the responses to these questions were generally not successful: small numbers of students elected to answer most of them and, more importantly, responses were often based on inadequate information. Too much of European history, both among textbooks and teaching, was apparently cloaked in a mantle of Eurocentrism. Thus the APEH examination committee decided to drop the theme dealing with the interaction of Europe and the wider world, because it tended to generate traditional political/diplomatic questions and answers and not address the reverse flow of influences.²⁸ As such, since that time it has only been the more traditional subjects of European explorations and imperialism that have brought the rest of the globe into the orbit of APEH essay testing.

Document-Based Questions

The DBQ is now more than a quarter-century old. Indirectly, its origins are rooted in the very beginnings of the program, as noted by Henry Winkler when he wrote that the exam had been "drawn up in the belief that students should be exposed as early as possible...to some of the primary materials which give the feel of history-in-the-making."²⁹ At that time, he was referring to the inclusion of documentary materials in textbooks and classroom discourse. The great leap toward an integration of primary source materials into the annual exam itself came with the 1975 DBQ, on the heels of the trailblazing effort of APUS two years earlier. The DBQ itself provides students with the ingredients for constructing a narrative based on analysis and deduction: maps, photographs, cartoons, graphs, and excerpts from memoirs, government documents, newspaper accounts, and speeches. The exercise is designed to test a student's ability to acquire knowledge from the raw materials of history; in fact, with their fifteen minutes of required reading time, students "must demonstrate historical craftsmanship on the spot (something historians are not usually required to do.)"³⁰

The DBQ, however, proved to be a controversial exercise for a number of years.³¹ Much of the criticism was levelled at the way aptitude and reading skills seemed to take precedence over thinking historically, especially as outside historical knowledge was not expected to be brought to the task and training students both to "assess the reliability of the documents as historical sources" and to write a narrative in response to the question often proved difficult. But teaching students to respond in proper fashion to DBQs is certainly an appropriate activity for the history classroom, while the DBQ format has proved to be an effective way to introduce non- mainstream, often-esoteric-or-even-exotic subjects³², as well as social history questions that were themselves more difficult for students to answer as FRQs.³³In addition, increasing numbers of teachers have come to see the wisdom in an exercise—however imperfect—that simulates the way in which historians write history.

Also over the years, test development committees have wrestled with DBQ directions in an effort to encourage students to "NOT simply summarize or repeat the contents of the documents" (added in 1979); and both to "use the documents in a historical context and draw conclusions from them" and to "construct a coherent essay that integrates the analysis of documents into a treatment of the topic" (added in 1980). But these DBQ directions were dropped in the 1983 exam. For the 1984 exam, however, students were advised to "take into account [a document's] source and the point of view of the author" in their analysis. The importance of this addition was underlined, literally, in the 1987 directions. The wisdom of discouraging students from summarizing, repeating, or paraphrasing documents was restored, in 1989, with the caution that "in no case should documents simply be cited and explained in a 'laundry list' fashion." A further admonition not to "simply summarize the documents individually" appeared in the 1998 exam—a sentence that was placed in bold letters the next year. Importantly, this summary of the directions and direction changes calls attention to the main problems students have had in responding to DBQs. Finally, a new grading method—called core scoring—was introduced in 2000, which has modified the way in which the directions are presented (starting in 2001) so as to indicate precisely what must be included in order for essays to earn higher scores: a relevant thesis that is also supported with evidence from the documents; use of a majority of the documents; an analysis of the documents by grouping them in appropriate ways (along with a reiteration of the earlier admonition, still in bold type, not simply to summarize the documents individually); a consideration of the sources of the documents and the authors' point of view.

There have been other, essentially minor, adjustments made to the presentation of DBQs, especially in terms of lengthening the documents while reducing their number. As always, the fundamental purpose of the exercise is to give students explicit directions and appropriately useful documents with which they can write a short history in response to the question and to enable them in the process to give evidence of their ability to think critically and historically.

Naming Names, Testing Topics

In historiography, "history as biography" was long a standard approach. "There is properly no History," wrote Emerson, "only Biography." And to Carlyle, "The history of the world is but the biography of great men." Such sentiments might seem to have been a governing principle of APEH exams for their first seventeen years. There were always several questions per year that revolved around monarchs, statesmen, religious leaders, philosophers, scientists, and/or artists. Beginning with the 1973 exam, however, a shift seems to have taken place, for in that year—and not for the last time—no question included the name of an individual European; in the years thereafter, individuals, vis-a-vis events, concepts, and forces, have occupied a less important place in the pantheon of questions. (For a list of those individuals named in essay questions, and their frequency, see Appendix III.)

This is not to suggest a teaching strategy that sacrifices the role of individuals in history, because historical figures continue to be part of some questions. In fact, the 1999 exam included two questions in which seven figures were mentioned by name, and the 2000 exam included three questions with five names. There are, however, some observations that can be made about the use of historical figures and the frequency of their being incorporated into questions.

There have been eighty-five such figures, with more than two-thirds (or 57) incorporated into the first ten years of questions, from 1956 through 1965. Forty-two of the people are part of questions dealing with political/diplomatic history, while all the rest—effectively, the other half, including religious leaders—falling under the intellectual/cultural theme. Colbert is the only person who can be placed as part of the social/economic theme. The last new political figure introduced was Mikhail Gorbachev, in the 2000 exam; before that the last new political figure had been Robespierre in 1970. Between the years for these two men, 1970 and 2000, the only new figures were artists, musicians, and writers.

It all began when the 1956 exam referred to the following heads of state: Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, Charles I of England, Louis XIV, Cromwell, the Great Elector (Frederick William), and William III of England. Louis XIV would be part of eleven years of questions during the first thirty years of the program, but then only once in the last twenty years. On a lesser scale, Charles V would be in questions five times during the first dozen years, and then not again until twenty-three years later. William III's debut was also his only appearance. The 1957 exam included the following, none of whom were heads of state: Marx, John Stuart Mill, Freud, Darwin, Einstein, Nietzsche, and Machiavelli. Marx has been part of more questions (19) than any other historical figure, but only once during the 1990s. Darwin was cited eight times, from 1957 to 1971, but then after a twenty-eight year hibernation returned in 1999 and 2000. Nietzsche—as good as dead—did not return. The 1958 exam included both political and intellectual figures, and by the 1959 exam some individuals began to return for roles in additional questions.

Subsequently, Luther and Calvin would be the two most used religious figures, at eight and seven times respectively, although a Reformation-related question was asked on twenty-four exams. Louis XIV, at twelve times, tops the list for monarchs, followed by Napoleon at nine, and Joseph II of Austria and Elizabeth I tied at eight. Elizabeth is also the most frequently asked woman, followed by Catherine the Great (seven times); the only other women to be tested by name on any exam is Maria Theresa of Austria. Among twentieth-century dictators, Hitler leads with nine, followed by Stalin at eight, although Hitler has not been mentioned by name in a question since 1972 (whereas Stalin was most recently in 1995 and 2000). Marx has been the most frequently used philosopher, followed by Locke at eight and Machiavelli at seven. Among scientists, there has been Darwin at ten, Newton at six, and Einstein at four. Freud is the only individual from his field represented, at eight times, which can be interpreted in any number of ways. Figures from the arts have mostly made single appearances (Shakespeare, Mozart, Beethoven, Jacques-Louis David, Delacroix, Wordsworth, Rembrandt, Giacometti, Goya, and Picasso), although three (da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Alexander Pope) have appeared on two exams each; however, prior to the 1970 exam, Shakespeare and da Vinci were the only figures from the arts to be subjects of questions.

While no essay question has ever been asked more than once, I have identified more than thirty of the most frequently tested topics (see Appendix IV), including the Enlightenment at twenty-five times, the Reformation at twenty-four, the Renaissance at twenty-three, the French revolutionary period at twenty-two, seventeenth-century England at eighteen, the Industrial Revolution at fifteen (but only three times since 1983), the arts (exclusive of Italian Renaissance questions) at fourteen (with eight such questions since 1981), followed by sixteenth-century Spain, imperialism, and Fascism/Nazism tied at thirteen. Mercantilism was a fairly popular subject with six questions between 1956 and 1972, but then only twice since then. Similarly, there were eight questions on the Thirty Years' War between 1957 and 1968, but only two subsequently; there were six questions on the Revolutions of 1848 between 1956 and 1970 and eight on nineteenth-century Russia between 1957 and 1971, but only one on each afterwards. There hasn't been a specific question on communism since the 1981 exam, on conservatism since 1969, on socialism since 1982, on romanticism since 1979, and on enlightened despotism as such since 1980 (although these subjects are at times subsumed within other questions, such as when aspects of communism might be considered as part of a question on the Cold War).

On the flip side of frequently-tested topics are topics that have been virtually ignored or only marginally included on the essay portion of the exam: the Spanish Inquisition, the Military Revolution, the witch craze (except for the 1980 DBQ), the Holocaust (especially as the exam was extended, in 1968, to include events to 1945), anti-Semitism, racism and the interaction between Europeans and other races of peoples within Europe, xenophobia, sexuality, assassinations and executions, economic crashes and crises (although the Great Depression was once the subject of a question), popular culture (except for the 2000 DBQ), peasant revolts and urban riots, organized labor and trade unionism, food, nutrition (except for the 1988 DBQ), and medical practices, and the migration and displacement of peoples (from the Morenos and Moriscos in the fifteenth century, to the Huguenots in the seventeenth century, to Armenians, Jews, and those whose lives were disrupted irretrievably by the Nazis and during the crises in the Balkans in the middle and late twentieth century). Children have only been the subject in a couple of DBQs. There have been questions on Darwin, but none relating to human origins. Most questions on religion have been on the Reformation and a few other early modern topics, but only one centered on the nineteenth century and none for the twentieth century.

To be sure, for some of these topics there have been no FRQs due to a relative paucity of coverage in the textbooks; for others there has been a concern for the sensitivities of some religious groups. But clearly there are areas where APEH has room to expand, even if it must do so with a delicate touch.

The Arts and the Visual

There was a time, a mere few decades ago, when the arts were more peripheral than integral to the teaching of European history. To be sure, one couldn't do justice to the Renaissance without some attention to art, architecture, and perhaps a little poetry and music. There were also the occasional works of art and literature that would be used because they revealed something or other about events, but not too much more. And so it was with APEH. Between 1956 and 1969 there was but one essay question (out of the 294 available to be selected) on the subject, although curiously in its focus it anticipated the regular appearance of such questions starting in the 1970s: "How were social and economic problems reflected in the literature of any TWO of the following nations in the period 1815-1870? England/France/Russia/Germany."³⁴

It was, however, the arts-oriented questions of the '70s that established a precedent and that were often pioneering and representative of creative and innovative ways of testing. Over the following three decades, fourteen such questions appeared, or an average of nearly one every two years. Those questions have dealt with the arts in all centuries covered by APEH, and most have linked the arts to the non-cultural themes of history. For example, question #6, from 1973, asks students to demonstrate how three eighteenth-century novels might be used as documentary sources for studying the age in which they were written. Question #6, from 1977, requests that students choose two twentieth-century works in either the visual or literary arts that offer images of man that reflect the age. Question #2, from 1984, reproduces paintings by Goya and Picasso in order for students to compare the way in which they express both the artistic styles and political issues of their times, while #2, from 1996, asks for a comparison of the patronage of the arts by Italian Renaissance rulers and dictators of the 1930s. Question #7, from 1987, also reproduces two paintings, but this time in order to prompt an elaboration on the technological and urban transformations that were characteristic of the second half of the nineteenth century.

Questions from 1988 and 1992 introduced architecture, one as a reflection of the conception and practice of monarchy, the other of differing theologies and religious practices. A question from 1990 used two paintings for what they might reveal about social life and leisure in two centuries. Then, for only the second time in the history of APEH (the first being in 1970), a question (#6, from 1997) gave students the option of choosing musicians, as well as artists and writers, to describe the Romantic response to political and socioeconomic conditions, 1800-50. Finally, although lines of poetry have been incorporated into a rare question here and there (e.g., as a source in a DBQ and in the form of a Pope couplet in a 1978 FRQ), question # 6, on the 2000 exam, asked students to determine the accuracy of four lines from a poem with regard to nineteenth-century gender roles. With paintings, literary excerpts, and poetry being occasional features of the APEH exam, given the rapidity of technological change, there may come a time when actual music selections and clips from history-oriented films will be integrated into the questions as well.

As is obvious, many of these questions on the arts have involved significant visual components, either as the sole focus or as launching points for an analysis of larger issues. Where such images had been a part of the multiple-choice section of the exam, the first-ever visual prompt accompanying an essay came in 1964: a simple black-and-white outline map of Europe with broken lines used to identify "East Central Europe," but without the identifying names of countries. A dozen years elapsed before visuals returned, and they did so on the back of the slave-trade DBQ in the form of three tables and an expense account. It remained for the DBQ on the role of the S.A. in Hitler's rise to power, in 1977, to include the first photograph, newspaper headline, and political cartoon as documentary evidence. These and other kinds of illustrations would thereafter become fairly regular components of the documentary make-up of DBQs.

For FRQs, the turning point for the use of visuals came with the 1979 exam: photographs of two chalices, one Catholic, the other Lutheran, with the question asking students to explain how the latter reflected the theology and ideals of the Reformation. Not incidentally, this was probably as perfect a question as any, chosen by a large percentage of those taking the exam and understood to the extent that what the chalices represented was used with varying degrees of effectiveness, thus contributing to a balanced distribution of scores. In addition, Readers at the time not only applauded the use of pictures and encouraged their use on future FRQs, but they also recognized "the leadership role of the AP exam in American education."³⁵

And so the visual images kept coming, in the form of sculpture,³⁶ paintings, architecture (both exteriors and interiors³⁷), and photographs. The banner year for such questions was 1999, with three questions, each centered on paintings or photographs from which to build responses; these formed part of a group, one of which students were required to answer.

Other Matters that Matter

Before concluding this anatomy lesson, there are a couple of other matters that require our brief, but still undivided attention. One concerns an effort on the part of the Educational Testing Service (ETS) to avoid, or at least to be sensitive to, subjects that might be offensive to some among the many and diverse constituencies involved in AP or that might adversely affect student performance on the exam.³⁸ This was brought to my attention in the years after the 1980 DBQ on the persecution of witches in the early modern period. This DBQ notwithstanding, there has never been another essay question on the subject, and yet when one considers that witchcraft concerns and persecutions spanned more than three centuries, affected most European countries, and victimized in excess of 100,000 people, it can hardly be dismissed as a minor or insignificant topic to test. Textbooks in the 1950s and '60s might have failed to describe or analyze the witch craze (and thus reason not to ask an FRQ), but for more than a decade now it has been a featured and fascinating textbook episode. Some years after the 1980 DBQ, I was told by an ETS official that witchcraft is too sensitive a subject: that it might offend the sensibilities of some parochial school officials, that some parents might not want their children exposed to subjects dealing with the devil and supernatural beliefs, and that a DBQ like the one from 1980 would no longer be approved. Similarly, this may also be why questions having to do with evolution/creationism or sexuality (e.g., heterosexuality, homosexuality, prostitution, pornography) have been absent from the exam, even as they are considered worthy of historical investigation and are usually integrated in some way into college surveys of European history and Western civilization. Additionally, this may be why textbooks that treat these subjects are excluded from serious consideration for adoption by some secondary schools and teachers.

A final significant issue concerning essay exam questions is the way in which they are worded. Taken as a whole, the phrasing of nearly a half century of such APEH questions has reflected the intent of all those university and secondary school historians who have served on the test development committees: to encourage students not only to recall the history they have studied but to write in a way that reflects their ability to think historically. Or as Henry Winkler wrote in 1961: "Clearly, the mastery of specific facts is not the be-all and end-all of teaching European history. Understanding history is the ultimate aim, and the Program tries to foster understanding."³⁹ Accordingly, students were asked from the first year of the program to develop and justify interpretations, to account for changes or degree of difference, to appraise or compare or explain or clarify.

A number of questions, however, especially during the earlier years of the program, consisted simply of a quotation and then the charge "discuss," but without any further direction toward analysis. (Curiously, the word "evaluate" was first used in an essay question on the 1958 exam and then was used regularly thereafter, but both "assess" and "analyze" did not join the testing vocabulary until the 1960s, perhaps reflecting existing patterns of questioning, although the intent was that students do those things.) Some quotations were followed by the question, "Do you agree?" but without the request for an accompanying justification that other similar quotation-questions required. There were still other questions, now and then, for which a single word or name would technically suffice as a response (e.g., from 1960, question #11: "In your opinion, which was the more absolute ruler, Catherine the Great or Napoleon?"⁴⁰). Similarly, there were a few questions that merely asked for a listing of items. As Winkler realized, "Over the years many of the essay questions have been of a type to elicit the 'why' and the 'what about it,' although admittedly there is inevitably some of the purely 'what' to be found among them."⁴¹

Two important steps marked the growing awareness of the role played by the careful wording of questions. The first occurred in 1981 with the publication of an article that provided an analysis of essay test construction that was based on twenty-five years of the annual reports written by chief readers, in both APEH and APUS.⁴²The second occurred in the late 1980s when the Advanced Placement Course Description: History listed the key terms (e.g., analyze, compare, explain) that commonly accompany essay questions; included in the list were definitions of the terms along with sample questions. The introductory paragraph included the following useful advice: "Effective answers to essay questions depend in part upon a clear understanding (and execution) of the meaning of important directive words.... An essay can only begin to be correct if it answers directly the question that is asked. Individual teachers can provide what AP examinations cannot: help with the meanings and applications of...[these] key terms."⁴³

Conclusion

The decade of the 1970s was pivotal for the development and maturation of the APEH essay exam section, akin perhaps to one of those turning points historians sometimes still like to identify. While the course and exam have always been designed to reflect their college-level equivalents, as well as the profession's evolving focuses, the shifts that took place in the 70s were more numerous and dramatic than in previous or subsequent decades. Among other things, a new delineation of themes was articulated which have remained in effect ever since, with only minor modifications, while a more conscious and successful effort was launched to provide something of an equitable balance among those themes, with political/diplomatic questions no longer dominating as before. The innovative document-based question joined the exam format in 1975, thus adding a new dimension to essay testing. New themes and documents, such as art, began making regular appearances in a variety of questions starting in 1972; visual stimuli (e.g., paintings, photos, cartoons, maps), hitherto confined to the multiple-choice portion of the exam, became part of essay questions, first in a DBQ in 1977, then as part of FRQs in 1979. After 1972, APEH became less "biography" focused, and in some years the questions were nameless. Reflecting changes in the research interests of professional historians, issues and exam questions relating to women's history became an increasingly integral part of the panorama of European history. Along with questions on women, other social history subjects became the focus of questions for the first time, such as demography, social structure, the decline of the aristocracy, and urbanization. Lastly, with one of the commonly-recognized themes of modern world history—the rise of the West—coinciding with much of the chronology of APEH, the '70s launched an effort to make the study of European history less provincial, to include questions reflective of greater global awareness, to direct us to think of Europe as part of the world beyond what is housed within the walls formed by the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, the North and Baltic Seas, and the Ural Mountains.

AP essay exams, if not quite as rigorous as the civil service examinations of imperial China, have often been as sophisticated and demanding as those offered to undergraduate history majors and even to graduate students, although to be sure they are graded with adjustments as to what can reasonably be expected from secondary school students and their AP classes. Former Chief Reader Phil Kintner called the essays "the real 'guts' of the APEH endeavor."⁴⁴ Founder Henry Winkler declared that "it is very largely the essay section of the examination which appears clearly able to test—and which in fact does test—for a sense of continuity and development. Indeed, it is fairly apparent that whatever may be the results of 'scientific' studies, there is very little of such a sense which can be adequately assessed in any objective test, no matter how carefully devised."⁴⁵ These prophetic words anticipated what has from the start been such a vital and successful part of a successful and vital program.

Finally, it should be noted that any patterns which may have been detected during the course of this analysis are products of chance and are random. There is no master plan that dictates the subject matter or types of questions that appear from year to year (except the effort to achieve balance among themes, time periods, and regions, and a conscious effort not to repeat a subject from one year to the next, or at least not in the same form). What further helps to insure freshness and surprise is that members of test development committees, both secondary and university people, serve an average of three years, which means "new blood" is regularly introduced, and all members work conscientiously to keep the program guidelines and the exam reflective of current research and of how the subject is taught at the university level. In this sense, the APEH essay exams have been a glorious and effective barometer of the modern study of European history, just as the program itself—warts and all—has helped to lead the way in which history is taught in the schools.

Notes

¹ For an overview of the AP Program writ large, see Eric Rothschild, "Four Decades of the Advanced Placement Program," The History Teacher 32:2 (February 1999): 175-205. Not incidentally, AP is owned by the College Board which, in turn, has a contract with the Educational Testing Service to develop and score the exams.

² For further explanation, see Robert Blackey, "How Advanced Placement History Essay Questions Are Prepared—and How Yours Can Be Too," Perspectives 20:8 (November 1982): 23- 25.

³ The author acknowledges his gratitude to Henry R. Winkler, professor emeritus and former president of the University of Cincinnati, for his considerate response to an e-mail request for information and insight into the early years of the program. See Henry R. Winkler, "The Advanced Placement Program and Examination in European History," Social Education 25:7 (November 1961): 332-42, which reproduces the entire APEH exam for 1958, including the multiple-choice questions. A complete exam was not published again until 1984.

⁴ For a year-by-year tally of the number of students taking the exam, see Rothschild, "Four Decades of the Advanced Placement Program," 206.

⁵ Winkler's e-mail to author, December 21, 2000; Winkler, "The Advanced Placement Program and Examination in European History," 333.

⁶ Winkler, Chief Reader's Report, 1956.

⁷ Between 1961 and 1967 the periods were: 1450-1660, 1660-1789, 1789-1870, 1870-1939. For 1968 and 1969 the four periods were reconfigured to 1500-1660, 1660-1789, 1789-1870, 1870-1945 (i.e., a later starting date by fifty years and a termination date that incorporated World War II). In 1970 the number of periods was reduced once again: Italian Renaissance to 1715, 1715-1850, 1850-1953 (i.e., a less precise starting date, but understood to include the High Renaissance, or from about 1450, and a termination date that advanced the course into the Cold War). Dividing questions into chronological periods ended with the 1972 exam. The modern termination date would be advanced periodically, to the mid-1960s for the 1973 exam, to 1970 for the 1986 exam, and "to the present" in time for the 1997 exam.

⁸ The number of questions posed and the structure of the exam from 1961 to the present can be seen in the following chart:

Year(s) Part A: Periods/
Questions per period Part B: Questions Total number
of questions

1961-1969 4 / 4 3 19

1970 3 / 4 3 15

1971 3 / 4 2 14

1972 3 / 3 3 12

1973 n/a n/a 10

1976-2000 * * 7

*In 1994, a new chronological grouping was introduced, as I will explain later in the text.

⁹ For the first seven years of the program two hours were allotted for the essay portion of the exam. Then, beginning in 1963, the College Board started to modify the time allotted for each essay question, in part to accommodate an expanded multiple-choice section. Additional alterations in the time allotted per question occurred in 1970 (when 10 minutes were restored to Part B and each of the three questions was weighted equally); in 1973 (when the exam was extensively reworked, now allowing one hour and fifty minutes); in 1975 (when the DBQ was instituted, with one hour each allowed for answering it and the sole FRQ); in 1977 (when the FRQ was reduced to forty-five minutes, with the DBQ holding at one hour); in 1981 (when students were again allotted one hour for the FRQ); in 1983 (when a 15-minute reading, planning, and analyzing period was introduced and the suggested time for each question was 45 minutes); in 1994 (when 30 minutes each was to be devoted to two FRQs, while the DBQ time held steady at one hour); and in 1996 (when 10 additional minutes were added to the FRQs). One reason for some of these changes in time allotments as well as in the weighting of essay and multiple-choice questions has to do with ETS's concern for grading consistency and reliability. As the ETS reasons, the more multiple-choice questions and the greater their weight vis-a-vis essay questions, the greater the reliability will be in the final scores.

¹⁰ For more information, see Michael S. Henry, "The Intellectual Origins and Impact of the Document-Based Question," Perspectives 24:2 (February 1986): 14-16, and Stephen F. Klein, "The Genesis of Shorter Document-Based Questions in the Advanced Placement American History Examination," Perspectives 21:5 (May-June 1983): 22-24.

¹¹ Winkler, "The Advanced Placement Program and Examination in European History," 332.

¹² Winkler, "The Advanced Placement Program...," 333.

¹³ Winkler's e-mail to author, December 21, 2000.

¹⁴ For example, for the 1967 exam, the period 1450-1660 included the new learning and art of the Renaissance and economic and social aspects of the Reformation, while the period 1870- 1939 included science, literature, and society, the capitalism of the large firm, and the impact of the world-wide depression on the social and economic order. For the 1968 exam, most of the topics remained the same or were similar, although for the period 1870-1945 "science, literature, and society" was reworded to "changing concepts of the universe, man, society, and the arts" and "the capitalism of the large firm" was eliminated. And then for the 1970 through 1972 exams, which was just before the transition from a chronological to a thematic structure, some revised topics were introduced, including the classical Renaissance and the Baroque for the period Italian Renaissance to 1715 and social structures in prerevolutionary Europe and society and culture in the Age of Metternich for the period 1715-1850. But the period 1850-1953 dropped reference to the world-wide depression while essentially retaining "changing concepts of man, society, science, and the arts."

¹⁵ Winkler, "The Advanced Placement Program and Examination in European History," 333.

¹⁶ Political/diplomatic, intellectual/cultural, and social/economic are the categories of themes that have been in place since 1972-73, and they are being used to describe questions from 1956- 72 to lend consistency to the analysis.

¹⁷ Such questions, however, often presented grading problems insofar as preparing standards and rubrics are concerned, especially when they swept widely and allowed for a great variety of options; according to an e-mail communication to me from Phil Kintner, a former Chief Reader, they also were a challenge to Readers who "were not well enough trained to handle all the quantities involved." [For example, question #21, from 1960: "In which of the following centuries has man's cruelty to man been the most extensive and in which the least extensive? The sixteenth century/The seventeenth century/The eighteenth century/The nineteenth century/The twentieth century." Reprinted by permission of the College Entrance Examination Board, the copyright owner.] And such questions have a tendency to encourage students to over- generalize at the expense of specific supporting evidence. Nevertheless, the value of questions that are broader based, at least to a degree (e.g., involving comparisons between events in different countries or from different times periods), was acknowledged by the Test Development Committee when, in 1994, the FRQs were again divided into two groups.

¹⁸ For a more thorough look at what happened at this conference and at its implications, see Mildred Alpern, "Advanced Placement European History," The College Board Review 93 (Fall 1974): 2-6, 26-27.

¹⁹ Lawrence Beaber, "Changes in the Advanced Placement in European History Program," AHA Newsletter 11:2 (May 1973): 38.

²⁰ Sometimes during these years traditional subject matter was introduced in refreshing new ways, as for example with question #5 from 1991 ("Between 1815 and 1848 the condition of the laboring classes and the problem of political stability were critical issues in England. Describe and analyze the reforms that social critics and politicians of this period proposed to resolve these problems.") and question #3 from 1994, which mixed a traditional political question about women rulers with social history issues, in this case "how issues of gender, such as marriage and reproduction, influenced their ability to obtain and exercise power." Reprinted by permission of the College Entrance Examination Board, the copyright owner.

²¹ Alpern, "Advanced Placement European History," 2-3; Beaber, "Changes in the Advanced Placement in European History Program," 39.

²² About once every four or five years each AP discipline/subject conducts a college curriculum survey to help guarantee that the program keeps abreast of changing content and instructional approaches; these surveys, in fact, are often catalysts for change in many AP subjects. Before these were begun, in the 1960s, the APEH examination committees periodically examined the most widely used textbooks on European history in order to achieve a comparable purpose with regard to content.

²³ Norman Davies' Europe: A History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996) offers readers a better balance between Europe, east and west.

²⁴ In the forty-five year history of the program, five essay questions have been devoted to or included Peter the Great and seven to Catherine the Great. In contrast, there have been close to fifty questions covering Alexander I, Nicholas I, Nicholas II, nineteenth-century Russia more generally, Lenin, Stalin, Gorbachev, Communism, and the Russian Revolution.

²⁵ Reprinted by permission of the College Entrance Examination Board, the copyright owner. By the way, the Chief Reader's Report of that year makes no mention of whether students had enough information to respond successfully with regard to the Eastern Europe part of the question.

²⁶ One, in 1959, dealing with "ways in which the non-European world helped to change the European balance of power between 1715 and 1815"; the other, in 1963, asking students to determine the extent to which "Europe's economy in the eighteenth century [may] be considered a world economy." Reprinted by permission of the College Entrance Examination Board, the copyright owner.

²⁷ Of two questions in 1973, one was on changing Western attitudes toward China and Japan, the other on the European economic penetration of Africa. Of two questions in 1974, one was on the reasons for Japan adopting Western science and technology while China did not, the other on the conflicting outlooks for the colonized regions of the world toward Western civilization. Of two questions in 1975, the DBQ was on suppressing the slave trade by Britain and the U.S., the one FRQ on the changes in the views of Europeans toward the cultures of China and India. The sole question in 1978 was on the reasons behind Europeans' being able to gain economic and political control over non-European peoples.

²⁸ James McAree, Chief Reader's Report, 1976.

²⁹ Winkler, "The Advanced Placement Program...," 333.

³⁰ Alpern, "Advanced Placement European History," 4.

³¹ For a list of each year's DBQ, see Appendix II.

³² The best example is probably the DBQ of 1983. There are any number of subject areas that might surprise students and teachers of APEH, but the Flemings and Walloons in Belgium struck many as a stretch with regard to where the subject matter of the exam should go. In response, however, such a seemingly off-the-wall topic (or one, for example, on hunting in Lapland, or on migration patterns of gypsies in Eastern Europe, or on the rituals of Hasidic Jews in Poland) calls attention to the DBQ as a self-contained exercise where students are not expected, much less required, to bring in outside knowledge. Even when DBQs roam in more familiar territory, such as the French Revolution's Reign of Terror or the role of the S.A. in Hitler's Germany, rarely did students make reference to anything not in the documents provided. To be sure, these latter subjects are ones which students "expect" or ordinarily think of as history, and thus they are not "surprised." Clearly, there is more to history than what is familiar, and the AP course description and exam are intended to reflect college-level courses, which in turn should reflect an ever-changing discipline and, at times, the introduction of "new" materials or perspectives.

³³ See, for example, the 1981 DBQ, a comparison of middle-class and working-class attitudes toward work and its effect on workers in nineteenth-century Western Europe and whether those attitudes crossed social class lines.

³⁴ Reprinted by permission of the College Entrance Examination Board, the copyright owner. Actually, there were three additional questions that could have involved students in discussing the arts, such as one from 1959 that asked students to discuss aspects of the Renaissance suggested by three of five men, two of whom were Shakespeare and da Vinci. But in each case the question also made it possible for the arts to be avoided.

³⁵ Robert Blackey, Chief Reader's Report, 1979.

³⁶ The 1981 exam presented Michelangelo's David and Giacometti's Man Pointing for students to compare as expressions of "the artistic, philosophical, and cultural values of their times." Although Giacometti's work bears his distinctive style and is reproduced in some textbooks, it is less familiar than the almost-universally recognized David; this presented some students with difficulties in answering the question. Nevertheless, both are the kind of art from which students are able to build answers, which is most important.

³⁷ Question #3, from 1988, showed paintings of two palaces, Philip II's Escorial and Louis XIV's Versailles, and asked students to use them as a starting point for analyzing "the similarities and differences in the conception and practice of monarchy of these two kings." The major problem was that students tended not to know as much about how Philip's palace reflected his conception of monarchy as they did about Louis' relation to his much-copied and photographed chateau. Comparable problems faced those who chose question #2, in 1992, which presented the interiors of a Protestant church and a Roman Catholic church from the seventeenth century, with the task to "explain how these interiors reflect the differing theologies and religious practices of Protestantism and Catholicism at that time." Reprinted by permission of the College Entrance Examination Board, the copyright owner. Another potential problem with the use of visual images is the clarity of their reproduction; such clarity is vital if students are to extract the kind of detail that is usually necessary for an effective response.

³⁸ In its "Fairness Review" process ETS employs a sensitivity review procedure that evaluates its test questions, as well as its other products, "for their awareness of the contributions of various groups to United States society" and in order to avoid language, symbols, and examples "that are sexist, racist, or otherwise potentially offensive, inappropriate, or negative toward any group." At the same time, ETS recognizes that it should also be clear to test takers that its "materials are being used to assess knowledge and do not represent the view of the test developer. For example, it would be acceptable to include material about slavery or the Holocaust in history tests even though these topics would be considered inflammatory in other types of tests, such as reading skills tests." Officials at ETS would also like those of us who evaluate their tests to understand that there is a difference between materials that might be appropriate for use in a monograph, where the reader can choose to put it aside or skip over it, and those included as part of an exam where readers have no choice but to read, interpret, and write about what has been chosen for them.

³⁹ Winkler, "The Advanced Placement Program and Examination in European History," 333.

⁴⁰ Reprinted by permission of the College Entrance Examination Board, the copyright owner.

⁴¹ Winkler, "The Advanced Placement Program and Examination in European History," 334.

⁴² Robert Blackey, "A Guide to the Skill of Essay Construction in History," Social Education 45:3 (March 1981): 178-82. Reprinted in Blackey, ed., History Anew: Innovations in the Teaching of History Today (Long Beach: The University Press, California State University, Long Beach, 1993).

⁴³ Advanced Placement Course Description: History (College Entrance Examination Board, 1987), 60-61. A word of caution, however, and with respect to George Santayana's caution to those who do not know history: those who have forgotten or ignored what has been learned about test construction in history will surely repeat past mistakes. Witness the 2000 exam, where one question simply called upon students to discuss certain developments (what Winkler labeled the "purely 'what'" kind of question) and another asked "how accurately" some lines of poetry reflected gender roles, a charge that could be answered either "very accurately" or "not accurately."

⁴⁴ Kintner's e-mail to author, January 10, 2001.

⁴⁵ Winkler, "The Advanced Placement Program and Examination in European History," 333.

Appendix I: Themes of the APEH

1972-1974: There were six themes:

Political: Toward Egalitarian National States, including the extension of political democracy and parliamentary governments; the rise of the modern state and the development of its variant forms; the development of political parties, programs, and ideologies; the extension and limitation of individual civil rights and freedoms; forms of political dissent, reform, and revolution; types of political dominance: federalism, colonialism, and imperialism.

Intellectual: Changing Concepts of Man, God, and the Universe, including the scientific revolutions: attitudes, concepts, and consequences; the visual and performing arts as statements of cultural values and evidence of historical changes; the developments in philosophical thought and their relationship to traditional religious ideas and institutions; the rise of the social and behavioral sciences and their relation to the development of historical studies; forms and content in fictional literature as reflections of and evidence of historical growth; the development of the mass media and their influence upon the formation of popular cultural values and egalitarian attitudes.

Social and Cultural: The Rise of a Mass Urban Society, including the changing social structures from hereditary classes to egalitarian individualism; the role of the city in the changing of cultural values and social patterns; modes of social mobility and the responses of traditional societies to modernization; conflicts of cultural and social values in emerging and developed mass societies; competitive ideas and theories of the nature of man and societies; the interactions between elites and masses.

Economic: The Growth of an Industrial Technology, including the origins and developments of the Industrial Revolution; the growth of competition and interdependence in national and world markets; the relationships between private and state contributions to economic growth; the changing forms and organization of labor supply; transportation, communication, and finance capital in economic modernization; economic theories as a basis for social and political programs.

International Relations: The Emergence of World Politics, including the rise and spread of the modern state as a competitive and cooperative form of power relationships; systems of interstate accord and conflict: diplomacy, war, and power blocs; attempts to restrain interstate conflicts from balance of power diplomacy and international law to international organization; reform movements and revolutions as responses to international and intercultural tensions; the rise of major non-European powers and their effect upon the European powers; the consequences of technological advances and egalitarian democracy on the development of international political affairs.

Intercultural Responses: Europe and the Wider World, including the impact upon Europe of increasing contact with and involvement in the non-European world; problems of racial and cultural contact and conflict; the missionary aspect of Christianity and its contribution to the spread of European culture; the social and political consequences of economic modernization in the non-European cultures; the rise of Europeanized intellectual and technical elites to leadership in non-European cultures.

1975-1976: There were five themes. The above themes generally remained in place with the following exception:

Intellectual and Social and Cultural themes, as above, were amalgamated. The changes in this new category were clearly noticeable, largely in terms of eliminating some subjects and combining others: the scientific revolutions: attitudes, concepts, and consequences; the visual and performing arts and literature as statements of cultural values and as historical evidence; the developments in social and philosophical thought and their relationship to traditional ideas and institutions; the role of the city in changing cultural values and social patterns; the shift in social structures from hierarchical orders to modern social classes and the interaction between elites and masses; the formation of popular cultural values and attitudes in developed and in emerging mass societies.

1977- present: Three themes combined many of the previous themes:

Political and Diplomatic History, including the rise of the modern state in its various forms; the development of political parties and ideologies; the extension and limitation of individual civil liberties; the rise of nationalism; forms of political protest, reform, and revolution; types of colonialism and imperialism; interstate conflict: diplomacy, war, and power blocs; relationship of European and non-European powers, including decolonization; relationship between domestic and foreign policies; efforts to restrain interstate conflict: treaties, balance of power diplomacy, and international organizations.

Intellectual and Cultural History, including the secularization of learning and culture; changes in religious thought and organization; the scientific revolution and its consequences; major trends in literature and the arts as statements of cultural values and as historical evidence; developments in social thought (economic and political theory, etc.); the spread of literacy; the diffusion of new intellectual concepts among different social groups; changes in popular culture such as the development of new attitudes toward religion, toward the family, toward work.

Social and Economic History, including the role of the city in changing cultural values and social relationships; the shift in social structures from hierarchical orders to modern social classes; changes in the nature of elites and their interaction with the lower classes; the development of commercial practices and their economic and social impact; the origins and development of industrialization; changes in the European demographic structure; changes and continuities in the European family structure and relationships; the growth of competition and interdependence in national and world markets; the relationships between private and state contributions to economic growth.

Subsequently, there would be the occasional modification and addition to the subjects subsumed under each theme, but nothing more.

Appendix II: Subjects of DBQs, 1975-2001

1975 Suppressing the slave trade

1976 Population trends in France & Germany, 19th & 20th centuries

1977 Role of German paramilitary groups in Hitler's rise to power

1978 Encouraging education for women, Renaissance to 18th century

1979 Advantages & disadvantages of the Terror during the French Revolution

1980 Persecution of individuals as witches, 15th through 17th centuries

1981 Working- & middle-class attitudes toward work in 19th-century W. Europe

1982 Child-rearing among English upper classes, 16th through 18th centuries

1983 Differences between Flemings & Walloons in Belgium, 19th-20th centuries

1984 Role of the army in the German aircraft industry, 1908-1918

1985 Views on juvenile crime & its effects on the legal treatment of juvenile offenders in 19th-century Britain

1986 Pressures on Britain's Liberal government during the Sudan crisis, 1884-85

1987 Variations in the levels of literacy in Old Regime France

1988 Arguments for & against restrictions on the sale of gin in 18th-century England & their influence on the Gin Act of 1751

1989 Points of view concerning women's suffrage & its potential affects on the political & social order

1990 The ways in which the defenders of the Spanish Republic represented their aims & attitudes

1991 The views of those addressing the issue of slavery during the Enlightenment & the French Revolution

1992 The political & cultural issues in the debate over Pan-Slavism

1993 The values & purposes of Renaissance education & how they changed over time

1994 The controversies over the relationship between the English & Irish, 1800-1916

1995 Responses to the outbreaks of plague, 15th to 18th centuries

1996 The challenges to the security, unity, & prosperity of the Dutch Republic, 1650-1713

1997 Attitudes & reactions toward the participation of women in the sciences, 17th & 18th centuries

1998 The views of those concerned about the problems of political, economic, & social order in the German states before the revolutions of 1848

1999 Perceptions of Russians to the condition of the Russian peasantry, 1861-1914, & the proposals to change that condition

2000 The purposes served by rituals & festivals in traditional European life

2001 Character & condition of Greeks in the Ottoman Empire during the Greek movement for independence, 18th & early 19th centuries

Appendix III: Individuals named in FRQs

Adolphus, Gustavus 1968

Alexander I 1964

Alexander II 1958, '59, '63, '65, '70

Beethoven 1970

Bentham, Jeremy 1966

Bismarck 1958, '59, '61, '65, '66, '68, '88

Burke, Edmund 1963, '64

Calvin 1959, '61, '62, '64, '66, ' 69, '95

Catherine II 1959, '60, '63, '66, '71, '95, '99

Cavour 1958, '67, '68

Charles I 1956, '60, '63, '66, '68

Charles II 1960, '65, '66, '68

Charles V 1956, '60, '63, '64, '67, '90

Colbert 1961, '81

Copernicus 1959, '64, '84

Cromwell, Oliver 1956, '59, '67

Darwin 1957, '59, '62, '64, '66, '68, '70, '71, '99, 2000

David, Jacques-Louis 1970

da Vinci, Leonardo 1959, '64

Delacroix 1970

Descartes 1966, '69

Disraeli 1963, '68, '69

Einstein 1957, '60. '68, '74

Elizabeth I 1961, '62, '63, '65, '67, '68, '69, '99

Erasmus 1959, '64, '66, '67, '69, '71

Frederick II 1959, '62, '63, '66, '70, '99

Freud 1957, '60, '66, '68, '70, '74, '85, 2000

Giacometti 1981

Gladstone 1961

Gorbachev 2000

Goya 1984

Great Elector 1956, '68, '69, 70

Henry IV of France 1963, '65, '99

Henry VIII 1961, '70

Hitler 1961, '62, '65, '66, '68, '69, '70, '71, '72

Hobbes 1958, '64, '68

James I 1960, '62, '63, '67, '69, '93

James II 1960, '65, '66

Joseph II 1959, '61, '62, '65, '66, '67, '68, '71

Lenin 1961, '64, '65, '66, '67, '68, '83

Locke 1958, '65, '67, '69, '70, '72, '74, '83

Louis XIII 1966

Louis XIV 1956, '59, '61, '64, ;65, '67, '68, '69, '72, '75, '78

Louis XV 1964

Louis XVI 1966, '68

Loyola 1964

Luther 1959, '64, '66, '69, '70, '83, '85, '95

Machiavelli 1957, '62, '64, '67, '68, '84, '99

Malthus 1966

Maria Theresa 1963

Marx 1957, '59, '60, '61, '62, '63, '65, '66, '68, '69, '70. '71, '72, '75, '83, '85, '87, '88, '99

Medici, Lorenzo de 1959

Metternich 1958, '64, '69

Michelangelo 1972, '81

Mill, John Stuart 1957, '64

Montesquieu 1963, '65

More, Thomas 1967

Mozart 1970

Mussolini 1959, '61, '65, '66, '68, '70

Napoleon I 1959, '60, '61, '63, '64, '68, '69, '71, '81

Napoleon III 1960, '64, '65, '66, '68, '70

Newton 1966, '68, '74, '78, '83, '84

Nicholas I 1969

Nicholas II 1968, '82

Nietzsche 1957

Owen, Robert 1966

Peter the Great 1965, '68, '69, '70, '89

Philip II 1959, '65, '67, '68, '88, '92, 2000

Picasso 1984

Pope, Alexander 1970, '78

Pope Leo XIII 1963

Pope Pius IX 1959

Rembrandt 1972

Richelieu 1968

Robespierre 1970, '89

Rousseau 1962, '64, '65, '67, '75, '84

Savonarola 1964, '67

Shakespeare 1959

Smith, Adam 1961, '70

Stalin 1967, '68, '70, '75, '81, '82, '95, 2000

Voltaire 1962, '71

William II, Kaiser 1968

William III 1956

Wordsworth 1970

Appendix IV: Frequently Tested Topics

Age of Exploration 1958, '63, '64, '67, '69, '71, '78, '80, '82, '89, '92, '97

Arts, The 1962, '70, '72, '73, '77, '78, '81, '84, '87, '89, '90, '92, '97, '99

Communism 1952, '58, '60, '61, '63, '65, '66, '74, '81

Congress of Vienna 1956, '64, '76, '93, '99

Conservatism 1957, '58, '69

Darwinism 1956, '59, '64, '68, '71, '99

1848 revolutions 1956, '59, '60, '64, '66, '70, '90

England in 17th 1956, '57, '59, '60, '62, '63, '64, '65, '66, '67, '68, '69, '71,

century '73, '78, '82, '87, '93

Enlightened Despotism 1959, '62, '63, '65, '71, '76, '80

Enlightenment 1956, '57, '61, '62, '63, '64, '65, '66, '68, '69, '72, '76, '77, '80, '82, '83, '84, '86, '88, '90, '92, '93, '94, '98, 2000

French Revolution 1957, '58, '59, '60, '61, '62, '63, '64, '65, '66, '67, '68, '69, '70, '71, '72, '78, '84, '85, '86, '89, '96

Imperialism 1960, '61, '64, '65, '66, '67, '69, '73, '74, '76, '82, '90, '97

Industrial Revolution 1956, '58, '59, '61, '68, '69, '71, '72, '73, '75, '77, '78, '83, '89, 2000

Liberalism 1956, '58, '61, '62, '68, '69, '73, '77, '82, '95

Marxism 1957, '63, '65, '69, '75, '83, '87, '88, '91, '99

Mercantilism 1956, '58, '59, '62, '70, '72, '81, '95

Nationalism 1957, '61, '62, '63, '67, '89, '95, '98

Nazism/Fascism 1956, '58, '60, '61, '63, '64, '65, '66, '68, '71, '72, '74, '83

Nineteenth-century 1957, '58, '59, '60, '65, '69, '70, '71, '84

Russia

Price Rise 1957, '62, '67, '89

Reformation 1957, '58, '59, '61, '62, '63, '64, '65, '66, '68, '69, '70, '71, '77, '79, '83, '85, '86, '87, '88, '91, '95, '96, '98

Renaissance 1956, '58, '59, '60, '61, '62, '63, '64, '65, '66, '67, '69, '71, '72, '77, '82, '84, '85, '86, '88, '94, '96, '98

Reign of Louis XIV 1959, '64, '65, '67, '68, '72, '75, '88

Romanticism 1958, '60, '70, '79

Russian Revolution 1964, '67, '71, '72, '78, '80, '85, '87, '94

Scientific Revolution, 1957, '58, '68, '69, '76, '78, '84, '90, '91, 2000

17th-cent. intellectual

Socialism 1959, '67, '82

Spain, 16th-century 1957, '59, '61, '64, '65, '66, '67, '68, '69, '70, '93, '97, 2000

Thirty Years' War 1957, '58, '60, '61, '63, '64, '65, '68, '80, '99

Treaty of Versailles 1956, '58, '60, '64, '67, '76, '99

Women 1978, '88, '89, '90, '93, '94, '95, '96, '97, '98, '99, 2000

World War I 1959, '62, '63, '65, '98

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