It was recently reported that While Jordan Peterson decimates the woke movement with words, absolutely thrashing it in a National Post op-ed, the Florida Senate is stepping in to wreck it yet further, in Florida, at least, by keeping it out of schools.
According to its summary, “[t]he bill specifies that subjecting any individual, as a condition of employment, membership, certification, licensing, credentialing, or passing an examination, to training, instruction, or any other required activity that espouses, promotes, advances, inculcates, or compels such individual to believe certain specified divisive concepts constitutes unlawful discrimination.”
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Additionally, the summary states that “The bill defines individual freedoms based on the fundamental truth that all individuals are equal before the law and have inalienable rights. Accordingly, the bill requires that instruction, instructional materials, and professional development in public schools be consistent with principles of individual freedom.”
One of the major features of the bill his how it affects what is taught in schools. Here’s what the bill itself says it would do:
Each district school board is responsible for providing all courses required for middle grades promotion, high school graduation, and appropriate instruction designed to ensure that students meet State Board of Education (SBE) adopted standards in reading and other language arts,
mathematics, science, social studies, foreign languages, health and physical education, and the
arts.
Public school teachers are required to teach efficiently and faithfully, using the books and
materials required that meet the highest standards for professionalism and historical accuracy,
and employing approved methods of instruction, certain prescribed courses of study, including
health education and character development. The SBE is encouraged to adopt standards and
pursue assessment of the requirements for prescribed courses of study and methods of instruction
employed by public school teachers.
SBE rule regarding required instruction and reporting requires that instruction on the required
topics must be factual and objective, and may not suppress or distort significant historical events,
such as the Holocaust, slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction, the civil rights movement and the contributions of women, African American and Hispanic people to our country. Examples
of theories that distort historical events and are inconsistent with SBE-approved standards
include the denial or minimization of the Holocaust, and the teaching of Critical Race Theory,
meaning the theory that racism is not merely the product of prejudice, but that racism is
embedded in American society and its legal systems in order to uphold the supremacy of white
persons. Instruction may not utilize material from the 1619 Project and may not define
American history as something other than the creation of a new nation based largely on universal
principles stated in the Declaration of Independence.
So, while other states decline further into the gaping pit of wokeness, letting their schools and teachers push radical leftist ideas on the minds of their pupils, Florida will tack in the opposite direction under this bill. When it’s passed, teachers will have to teach their students the glorious truth about America, not some hogwash impressed on them by other blue-hairs.
Yet better, rather than relying on schools to enforce the standards on themselves, the Florida SBE would have large powers to determine what books can be used, what lesson plans can be taught, and what is historically accurate. Given that Florida is more Republican now than ever, that likely means that CRT and the 1619 lies will be kept out of the classroom.
