Ron's Gone Wrong, Con't

The government of Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis has completed their rewrite of Black history in the state for students this fall and the results are just as bad as I warned you they would be.

The Florida State Board of Education approved new rules Wednesday for how Black history will be taught in public schools that critics are decrying as a “step backward.”

The updated standards say students should learn that enslaved people “developed skills” that “could be applied for their personal benefit,” and that in teaching about mob violence against Black residents instructors should note “acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans.”

“These standards are a disservice to Florida’s students and are a big step backward for a state that has required teaching African American history since 1994,” the Florida Education Association (FEA), the state’s largest teachers union, said in a statement.

The standards are the latest development in an ongoing debate in Florida over how Black history should be taught in school. Earlier this year, the education board rejected a new Advanced Placement high school course on African American studies, arguing it lacked “educational value,” igniting protests and outrage.

Meanwhile, the state legislature has passed a raft of new laws backed by Republican presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who contends the measures remove “woke indoctrination” and empower parents. The laws ban the teaching of critical race theory, an intellectual movement that examines the way policies and laws perpetuate systemic racism, and forbid teachers from offering instruction that makes other students “feel guilt” because of actions committed by others in the past.

Education Commissioner Manny Diaz argued at Wednesday’s meeting in Orlando that the changes to the Black history curriculum make it more “robust.”

“I think this is something that is going to set the norm for standards in other states,” Diaz said, adding that Florida would continue to “teach the good, bad and the ugly of American history” in an age-appropriate manner.

But critics said the dozens of new “benchmark clarifications” to the existing Black history curriculum water down that history. The changes include teaching elementary school children to “recognize Rosa Parks and Thomas Jefferson as individuals who represent the United States.” The FEA criticized the approach, saying it excludes a deeper teaching of their “histories and struggles” in favor of easy identification and memorization.

Genesis Robinson, political director of Equal Ground, a voter education group, said the new standards omit important lessons regarding the history of civil rights in Florida and ultimately dehumanize people of color.

“Black history is more than being able to identify well-known Black people,” he said.

A spokesman for DeSantis did not respond to a request for comment. Alex Lanfranconi, communications director for the state Department of Education, echoed Diaz’s remarks on Twitter, saying the new standards “teach it all.”

“Don’t believe the union lies,” he wrote.

More than a dozen speakers at Wednesday’s board meeting opposed the changes, including state Sen. Geraldine Thompson (D), who helped pass a law in 2020 that requires schools to teach lessons about the Ocoee Massacre. The incident in 1920 began when several Black residents attempted to vote, and ended with as many as 60 people dead, making it the deadliest instance of Election Day violence in U.S. history.

Thompson said the new curriculum “suggests that the massacre was sparked by violence from African Americans. That’s blaming the victims. ”

 

Has anyone stopped to consider that Black kids in Florida might "feel guilt" over having the schools tell them that our ancestors were responsible for their own massacres because they wanted to, you know, not be slaves?

Of course not. By the way, Florida's Education Secretary saying  “I think this is something that is going to set the norm for standards in other states” is an open threat to criminalize Black History.

Treat it as such.