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Florida Bans Math Propaganda Textbooks
The Left is relentless in pushing its agenda, particularly on our children, who are vulnerable and naïve about the effects of propaganda in the schools. Gov. Ron DeSantis continues to hold the Left and its cohorts accountable for their actions and agenda, and they continue to misrepresent what they are doing.
The latest salvo from the Florida Department of Education and the legislature has been the rejection of math books being offered to the state. Propaganda in math books, you ask? How is that possible? The political Left has found a way. They cloak their teaching in the framework of critical race theory, by offering euphemisms for that term. Worse yet, they have taken a subject that was probably relatively harmless in its original form—Social and Emotional Learning Theory—and have redefined it through the racist content of the class. Before I explain how this manipulation of our education has evolved, I’d like to explain the actions that the FL Dept. of Education took just over a week ago:
Last Friday, the FLDOE announced in a press release that it is rejecting 54 of the 132 new math textbooks submitted for approval this year—the highest number of banned textbooks in the state’s history. The press release was titled ‘Florida rejects publishers’ attempts to indoctrinate students.’
According to the FLDOE, what made them reject all these books were references to Critical Race Theory, inclusions of Common Core, and ‘the unsolicited addition of’ Social Emotional Learning. Some books simply didn’t match Florida’s Benchmarks for Excellent Student Thinking, a set of standards set by the state.
The publishers that were affected were Accelerate Learning, Bedford Freeman and Worth Publishing Group, Big Ideas Learning LLC, Cengage Learning, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Math Nation, McGraw Hill LLC, and Savvas Learning Company LLC.
Gov. DeSantis has made his protest against these books eminently clear:
On Monday, DeSantis tweeted: ‘Math is about getting the right answer, not about feelings or ideologies. In Florida, we will be educating our children, not indoctrinating them.’
Works for me.
The FLDOE gives several examples on its website, but this is one of the most blatant:
Under an exercise supposed to be teaching students about polynomials, a kind of mathematical expression, the first few words introducing the teaching instructions are highlighted as guilty of mentioning the FLDOE’s ‘prohibited topics.’
‘What? Me? Racist?,’ read the instructions, before mentioning that the students will be working with a mathematical model measuring bias that has been used by over two million people to test their racial prejudice through the Implicit Association Test.
Once the State of Florida realized that, in spite of the Left’s protests to the contrary, the FLDOE saw that CRT (without using the term) was appearing under the guise of Social and Emotional Learning. The proponents of SEL state that teaching this curriculum is helpful to children:
Social-emotional learning (SEL) describes the mindsets, skills, attitudes, and feelings that help students succeed in school, career, and life, such as growth mindset, grit, and sense of belonging at school. Educators use many names for these skills, such as ‘non-cognitive skills,’ ‘soft skills,’ ‘21st century skills,’ ‘character strengths,’ and ‘whole child.’ Social-emotional learning is an important part of a well-rounded education. Research shows that SEL is an important lever for boosting academic achievement. Positive social-emotional skills are also correlated with improved attendance and reduced disciplinary incidents.
It sounds pretty harmless, doesn’t it? The description leaves out the latest infiltration of the focus on racism:
Our mission at Empowering Education is to enable learning through social and emotional learning. That includes helping children wrestle with the racism and injustice of the world, learn to appreciate differences, and develop the skills to resolve conflicts. We need SEL more than ever so that our children grow up in a world where they feel valued, respected, and heard no matter their skin color.
Fortunately for the citizens of Florida, Gov. DeSantis and his Department of Education are well aware of the insidious nature of the Left’s education curriculum.
They are adamant about forcing their agenda on all of us.
We all need to keep a watchful eye on the Left’s efforts to brainwash our children.
Published in Education
Maybe everything “novel” should be built at ground level, until they have some time to work things out.
It’s okay. They usually don’t either. That is why there are preliminary design reviews.
Latest Orlando Sentinel garbage. Oh! Only one math textbook publisher has been approved! Must be political! They must have donated to DeSantis’ campaign!
Uh, no!
Well, there must be some connection to DeSantis! Oh! Gov. Youngkin in VA likes the publisher!
Uh, so?
BTW, another publisher just needs to make minor changes for approval. I expect they will.
That link that Henry Racette provided had a list of approved curriculum from multiple publishers, so I am not sure if I’m misreading or the Sentinel is lying.
I think they just conveniently “ignored” the other information.
Zafar, did you see any on the list that you think the schools should have kept?
I’m actually on Florida’s side with the math books. Wrt Toni Morrison and Art Spiegelman (Maus) I see it trending the other way. Some subject matter is uncomfortable and disturbing. Maus is possibly the gentlest way to educate about the Holocaust without minimising it.
I know folks here are divided about Maus. I’ll just suggest that maybe a gritty account of the Holocaust isn’t appropriate for an audience sufficiently unsophisticated that a graphic novel is the preferred medium. But I’m generally skeptical of the idea of conveying horror to young people, given that I think they’re rarely sufficiently developed to appreciate man’s inhumanity. A simple historical account, sans explicit shooting-in-the-head stuff, might be best.
I don’t know enough to agree or disagree, but somehow this comment reminded me of a quote from Chesterton:
Another quote:
Number the Stars was excellent reading for elementary and middle school. No one recommends that book anymore.
Night is superb for high school students. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is not terrible for kids, though it requires parental involvement.
When it comes to teaching young children about the Holocaust, you don’t need to put the horrors center stage. Death, to young kids, is horrific enough. Personalizing and identifying with the loss is enough. Seeing the other as human and being rightly appalled at humans thinking they were not is enough.
Maus may be appropriate for the higher end of high school, but there’s plenty of Holocaust material that is far more gentle.
I’m okay with telling kids fairy tales. I don’t particularly want them seeing real horrors graphically presented in class.
Incidentally, your quote reminds me of something I’ve long said on the subject of “dragons” (so to speak):
“It’s necessary to know that monsters exist, but it isn’t necessary to know about every monster.”
Make sure they know that great evil has occurred and can occur, but be careful about haunting their young imaginations with vivid images of it.
What it really comes down to in my mind is what gets taught when, how, and why.
It is necessary to let children know what their culture finds evil, appalling, good, noble, etc.
But these things are not universal within our culture, despite our public schools’ agenda.
History can be taught with less visceral bits, and should be. Those visceral bits are meant to trigger emotions which are about acculturating.
Rage, resentment, contempt; these are not healthy things to feed to the gullible and impressionable because it makes them unstable and manipulable.