The College Board, the non-profit organization that owns the Advanced Placement program, recently announced that it will be entirely cutting ancient and medieval history from its A.P. World History course, the most widely taken world history class in the country. The new course will begin at the year 1450 and will only cover modern history, omitting the entire first 5,000 years of recorded history. The College Board will offer another course, called “pre-A.P. World History” which will include only ancient and medieval history; the problem is that material from this course will not be included on the A.P. test and no college credit for taking the course will be offered, so students will have little motivation to take it and schools will have little motivation to offer it. Furthermore, most public high schools will not be able to afford to offer it, because the course costs money.