Last week, the Florida Board of Education unanimously approved a controversial new curriculum for African American history for students in the state.
Opponents called it whitewashing history. A group of 11 organizations, including the NAACP and the Florida Education Association, criticized the state for omitting or rewriting “key historical facts about the Black experience.”
Some of the key complaints are that the curriculum leaves out Florida’s role in slavery and the oppression of African Americans, identifies racism and prejudice without going into depth who was promoting it, victim-blames Black communities, uses outdated language, and requires teaching that some enslaved people learned valuable skills that were useful after they were freed.
At a press conference Friday, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis defended the curriculum as “factual,” telling a CNN reporter, “They’re probably going to show some of the folks that eventually parlayed, you know, being a blacksmith into, into doing things later in life.”
“Everything is there,” said education board member and DeSantis appointee MaryLynn Magar. “The darkest parts of our history are addressed, and I’m very proud of the task force. I can confidently say that the DOE and the task force believe that African American history is American history, and that’s represented in those standards.”
Banned:As demand for AP African American Studies curriculum surges across US, Florida ban remains
Also on Friday, Vice President Kamala Harris spoke in Jacksonville about the curriculum she said would “replace history with lies.” DeSantis accused her of lying about Florida’s educational standards “to cover for their agenda of indoctrinating students and pushing sexual topics onto children.”
Here are the complete revised social studies academic standards for Florida. The document has been edited to display only the African American history section, the entire document can be found online.
Over objections,DeSantis’ state Board of Education approves new rules for teaching African American history
