The Center Square
By John Haughey
June 11, 2021
“Duval County School Board member Lori Hershey, a Republican running for the state House in 2022, and Rep. Cord Byrd, R-Neptune Beach, were among proponents who testified for the rule.”
(The Center Square) – The Florida Board of Education (BOE) Thursday approved a rule initiated by Gov. Ron DeSantis that specifies public schools teach American history based on “universal principles stated in the Declaration of Independence” and bans “critical race theory” from being taught in Florida classrooms.
Amid protests, attempts to disrupt the board from voting, and emotional public testimony from more than 30 opponents and proponents during the hearing at Florida State College’s downtown Jacksonville campus, the BOE adopted an amended rule that specifically bans “critical race theory” (CRT).
The original proposed rule barred teachers from attempting “….to indoctrinate or persuade students to a particular point of view” but never mentioned CRT specifically.
The amendment sponsored by board member Tom Grady in a split voice vote of the seven-member BOE prohibits “fiction or theory masquerading as facts, such as critical race theory.” The amended rule was subsequently adopted unanimously.
The Florida Education Association (FEA), the state’s largest teachers union, was among critics arguing that the word “indoctrinate” in the rule can be interpreted by partisan ideologues any way they want and called on the BOE to expand the definition of “significant historical events” beyond the lone cited example, the Holocaust.
“Let’s be clear, the word ‘indoctrination’ is a political term used for political purposes,” FEA President Andrew Spar told the board. “And that’s what this rule is all about.”
The word “indoctrinate” was not removed but Grady’s amendment adds language specifically addressing teaching the Civil War, Reconstruction, the Civil Rights movement and other “hard truths” of history.
Spar argued the rule is unnecessary because CRT is not taught in Florida schools but DeSantis refuted that claim in a Thursday news release citing three alleged instances of “attempts to teach CRT” in Palm Beach and Sarasota counties and at Jacksonville’s Douglas Anderson School of the Arts where two school cultural meetings separating students based on race were canceled amid backlash.
DeSantis, railing against CRT since March as he gears up his 2022 gubernatorial reelection campaign, issued statements before the meeting, addressed the BOE during the meeting in a 6-minute video and issued a news release afterward.
“Critical Race Theory teaches kids to hate our country and to hate each other. It is state-sanctioned racism and has no place in Florida schools,” DeSantis tweeted before the vote.
“The woke class wants to teach kids to hate each other, rather than teaching them how to read, but we will not let them bring nonsense ideology into Florida’s schools,” he continued. “I find it unthinkable that there are other people in positions of leadership in the federal government who believe that we should teach kids to hate our country.”
In his video, DeSantis claimed “toxic” CRT is “about trying to craft narratives about history” that are “not grounded in facts” in order to “bring ideology and political activism under the guise of education.”
DeSantis said CRT narratives “teach kids that the country is rotten and institutions are illegitimate don’t deserve any taxpayer dollars,” drawing applause from some in the crowd.
Duval County School Board member Lori Hershey, a Republican running for the state House in 2022, and Rep. Cord Byrd, R-Neptune Beach, were among proponents who testified for the rule.
The meeting was disrupted by opponents chanting ”Allow teachers to tell the truth,” started by Ben Frazier of the Northside Coalition of Jacksonville who called the rule “an effort to whitewash history by preventing teachers from teaching the truth about slavery, racism and other racial matters.”
Critical race theory. A part of the critical thinking process, involving history.
Quoting Heather Richardson, from June 12, 2021,
“…Critical Race Theory challenges this individualist ideology. CRT emerged in the late 1970s in legal scholarship written by people who recognized that legal protections for individuals did not, in fact, level the playing field in America. They noted that racial biases are embedded in our legal system. From that, other scholars noted that racial, ethnic, gender, class, and other biases are embedded in the other systems that make up our society.
Historians began to cover this ground long ago. Oklahoma historian Angie Debo established such biases in the construction of American law in her book, And Still the Waters Run: The Betrayal of the Five Civilized Tribes back in 1940. Since then, historians have explored the biases in our housing policies, policing, medical care, and so on, and there are very few who would suggest that our systems are truly neutral.
So why is Critical Race Theory such a flashpoint in today’s political world? Perhaps in part because it rejects the Republican insistence that an individual can create a prosperous life by will alone. It says that, no matter how talented someone might be, or how eager and dedicated, they cannot always contend against the societal forces stacked against them. It argues for the important weight of systems, established through time, rather than the idea that anyone can create a new reality.
It acknowledges the importance of history.”
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/june-12-2021
And, from the American Bar Association,
https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_rights_magazine_home/civil-rights-reimagining-policing/a-lesson-on-critical-race-theory/
I must express my deep distress that our children are not being allowed to learn about the true history of this nation.
Part of that true history continues today: White Supremacy in action.
When will this nation come to equal justice for all and address racial inequities in housing, access to healthy foods, health care, etc.?
The majority of people support redirecting a portion of police funds to other services while the majority also oppose defunding the police. Both things are the same thing, just worded differently. Most people don’t differentiate between the Black Lives Matter movement and the Black Lives Matter organization. The two are not mutually inclusive. There is not a consensus on what Critical Race Theory means or how teaching it should be approached in schools, yet both sides argue vehemently for or against it.
Of course, this has not stopped politicians from defining CRT in narrow terms in order to stir up their respective bases. It’s a form of political Munchausen syndrome by proxy.