A Note on Strayer's Ways of the World for the AP Course

[Chuck_Linsmeier]

For the past year, BFW High School Publishers has been auditing our textbooks in an effort to ensure our content is fully inclusive and reflective of the diverse audiences who use our resources. During this process, we discovered unacceptable content in our AP® World History textbooks, Ways of the World for the AP Course (all editions), by Robert Strayer & Eric Nelson. We recognize how deeply hurtful it is to see language like this and we apologize unreservedly for its inclusion.

While the authors included this historical reference to demonstrate the deep and widespread racism that fueled the British colonial era, this could and should have been illustrated without the use of offensive terminology. 

Creating educational products that are diverse, inclusive, and non-offensive is a priority for us as a company. Copies of the textbook that include this language will no longer be delivered to any schools. We are in the process of revising our student editions, teachers editions, and e-books to remove this reference. 

Moving forward we will include a broader and more diverse group of reviewers and apply stricter guidelines that have been developed in the last year to all of our teaching and learning materials to create better and more inclusive content. Our audit will continue and we will take immediate action on any further issues that are identified.

If you want to participate in our process or if you find content that you feel needs to be reviewed, we invite you to contact us at hsmarketing@bfwpub.com. 

Charles Linsmeier

Executive Vice President, General Manager

BFW High School Publishers