Uncouth Governor and rebarbative one-party misrule by Florida's Dull Republican legislators has consequences. It's like the movie, Idiocracy.
We must reject fear and ignorance, or fear of ignorance.
Truth, from Florida Phoenix columnist and FSU English Prof. Diane Roberts:
COMMENTARY
In DeSantis’ Florida, we’re raising our children to be closed-minded and ignorant
However, right-wing indoctrination is just fine
Gov. Ron DeSantis promoted his “Stop Woke Act,” restricting classroom instruction about racism and other systemic problems, in Wildwood on Dec. 15, 2021. Source: Screenshot/DeSantis Facebook
School’s in session. The kids have their new shoes and backpacks. The teachers have their new marching orders.
In Ron DeSantis’ Florida, teachers are expected to present a version of the world in which “gender” is not to be spoken of, “gay” likewise, there’s no climate crisis — the weather’s always changing! — Shakespeareneeds to be toned down, the human body is disgusting, slavery had an upside, America is the best country that ever was and ever will be, and books that challenge any of these self-evident truths must be banned.
In other words, educators are now expected to miseducate Florida children.
If they don’t, they can lose their teaching license. In addition, they could be charged with a third-degree felony.
Florida recently became the first state to approve “instructional” videos made by an outfit calling itself PragerU, intended to supplement public school class materials.
The “Prager” part is Dennis Prager, a right-wing talk show host who believes feminism and multiculturalism are destroying Judeo-Christian values.
The “U” part is a scam. There’s no university. No accredited body. No scholarly rigor. Even fewer facts. There’s only dangerous nonsense.
To be clear, Florida schools aren’t required to use PragerU products, not yet, anyway, but what do you want to bet that some of the more aggressive Aryan Karens of Moms for Liberty start pushing superintendents to incorporate Prager into the curriculum?
Casey DeSantis reportedly shows the videos, several of which claim teachers “lie,” to her children.
Lunatic fringe
Some videos are presented by lunatic fringe figures like Candace Owen, Tucker Carlson, and Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA, who famously called Donald Trump the “bodyguard of Western Civilization.”
In one, a cartoon Christopher Columbus assures two white kids that slavery was “no big deal” in his day. Besides, “being taken as a slave is better than being killed.”
Others insist single-payer health care is terrible and sustainable energy will never work because windmills kill birds and, anyway, environmentalists are practically Nazis.
Not surprisingly, Prager gets millions in donations from fracking and drilling interests.
In a truly spectacular PU offering, an animated Frederick Douglass explains, “I’m certainly not OK with slavery, but the Founding Fathers made a compromise to achieve something great, the making of the United States. It was America that began the conversation to end it.”
This is, as we credentialled academic types say, a load of freshly deposited bovine excrement.
First, remember that one-third of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 made their money on the backs of enslaved people.
Second, slavery was a “compromise”? How about “moral failing”? Justifying it as the institution that enabled America to be “great” is obscene.
And please: America did not invent abolitionism. The English Quakers inveighed against slavery in the 17th century; in Scotland, there were several court cases challenging slavery in the mid-17th century, 20 years before the Declaration of Independence.
The U.S. outlawed slavery a full 22 years after it was banned in the British Empire.
PragerU declares — as does DeSantis — “leftist indoctrination” in public schools must be eradicated.
Rightist indoctrination, however, is just fine.
Indoctrination
At the recent Moms for Liberty Reichsparteitag in Philadelphia, Dennis Prager said, “It’s true. We bring doctrines to children. But what is the bad of our indoctrination?”
Meanwhile, teachers are demoralized and scared. They’re also getting scarce. The Florida Education Association says there are nearly 7,000 teacher vacancies across the state.
The Department of Education disputes FEA’s numbers, but they would, wouldn’t they?
Former Polk County sixth grade teacher Anita Carson said, “Is teaching that other people exist in the world worthwhile? Yes. How do you get around that? Without losing your license?” She added, “If one parent complains to the Board of Education, you’re now under investigation.”
In Hernando County earlier this summer, nearly 50 teachers said they planned to resign. Math teacher Alyssa Marano was one of them. She told a school board meeting: “No one is teaching your kids to be gay,” she said. “Sometimes, they just are gay. I have math to teach. I literally don’t have time to teach your kids to be gay.”
But DeSantis and Florida’s anti-education Department of Education remain convinced that teachers are hell-bent on turning children into gender fluid Marxists who’ll grow up to become BLM radicals determined to impose godless solar power on the nation.
So, the state obsesses over pronouns. Policing bodies, regulating who goes to what bathroom, taking books off shelves and out of libraries because there might be a gay character or an allusion to sex or a person of color encountering systemic racism, and controlling what students call themselves — this is more important than discovering the wonders of science and literature.
Regulating nicknames
Instead of encouraging curiosity and creativity, teachers now have to regulate nicknames. Parents must sign a form giving permission for their kid Charlotte to be called “Charlie.” And what if she’s gay? Or, even worse, trans? Nobody can talk about it.
Instead of encouraging curiosity and creativity, teachers now have to regulate nicknames. Parents must sign a form giving permission for their kid Charlotte to be called “Charlie.” And what if she’s gay? Or, even worse, trans?
The new education bill declares that under Florida law, “A person’s sex is an immutable biological trait,” so no asking a kid for their preferred pronouns. Their “external genitalia” at birth defines them whether they like or not.
Whether the parents like it or not, too. Even if parents fully support the child born a boy but now identifying as a girl, the state of Florida doesn’t care.
Parental choice is valid only for conservative parents.
You can’t blame teachers for getting out. They’re disrespected, insulted, harassed, impeded, and certainly not paid enough to be told to teach the lies the state imposes on them.
Florida doesn’t have a functioning education system; Florida has chaos.
AP African American history is out, but AP Psychology is back in — sort of. DOE had initially said the course content regarding gender and sexuality (a vital part of the study of psychology) violated Florida law. Then, when the College Board informed the state that taking a censored version of the course would not gain a student AP credit, the state reversed itself.
Yet damage has been done: While Hillsborough and Brevard counties have reversed course and will now offer AP Psychology after announcing it would be dropped, some counties, such as Flagler, have dropped the course, while in Broward County, parents must opt in.
Same with that noted pornographer William Shakespeare. To be on the safe side, districts in Tampa Bay and elsewhere, worried that some dolt from Moms for Liberty will figure out that there’s a lot of sex in his work, have decided to offer cleaned-up excerpts instead of whole plays.
Romeo and Juliet
It doesn’t matter that DOE Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr., belatedly realizing this made Florida look even stupider than usual, declared “Romeo and Juliet” his “book of the month.”
Apparently, plenty of Florida parents are all right with their kids emerging from school utterly ill-equipped to function in the job market or higher education.
Who wants to hire a science denier in a society increasingly dependent on technology?
Who wants to admit into college a student who’s never studied a play by Tennessee Williams because gay writers were too risky to teach?
Who will take seriously a law school applicant who’s never read “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass,” but saw the PragerU video and assumes the great abolitionist thought slavery was an acceptable price to pay for American prosperity?
Florida has chosen ignorance. We will eventually drown in it.
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