By Diane Roberts
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! — Shakespeare needs 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.
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.
Diane Roberts is an 8th-generation Floridian, born and bred in Tallahassee. Educated at Florida State University and Oxford University in England, she has been writing for newspapers since 1983, when she began producing columns on the legislature for the Florida Flambeau. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Times of London, the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Oxford American, and Flamingo. She has been a member of the Editorial Board of the St. Petersburg Times–back when that was the Tampa Bay Times’s name–and a long-time columnist for the paper in both its iterations. She was a commentator on NPR for 22 years and continues to contribute radio essays and opinion pieces to the BBC. Roberts is also the author of four books.
RUSSELL A SMITH says
Wow, the title of the article describes the author, not our Governor! Schools are for learning reading, writing and mathematics’ not what messed up social norms an educator wants to push. Get a grip! Public Schools and our Tax dollar for learning!
richard says
Fiat Justitia Ruat Caelum- Lucius Calpurnius Piso. Let Justice be done, though the Heavens fall.
Once Again, Diane Roberts shows us the way. Whether through her scathing wit and irony, a la Jonathan Swift, or her forthright and bold prose, she attacks the dangerous and doth not yield– no matter what.
Neither should we.
Indeed, Fiat Justitia Ruat Caelum applieth here — in spades.
DeSantis’s benighted vision is a clear and present danger to the future of our beloved Florida and our next generations. His political career needs to be stymied, nipped in the proverbial bud, and relegated to the dustbin of all autocratically-ordained punitive laws that have no place in a democratic nation.
The Long and short of it is this: He AIN’T OUR KINGFISH.
Kudos once again, Dr Roberts.
Eileen Marie Gernet says
We all know this guy has to go, but unless we impeach we are stuck till 2026.
Marge says
This article was obviously typed up by a seriously disturbed, progressive, weirdo. One can only hope Governor DeSantis stays Governor or becomes our next President.
kathy duffy says
Bravo
dave says
The big takeaway I got and the biggest insult to our teachers “” In other words, educators are now expected to miseducate Florida children. And if they don’t, they can lose their teaching license and possibly be charged with a third-degree felony.”” DeSantis, what’s he good for, Absolutely nothing.
Charles says
Hey DeSantis raise your children how you want and let other parents do the same. Mind your own business, just because you are Governor doesn’t give you the legal right to tell others how to raise their children. Get your priorities straight. How about not allowing sales of AR15 PERIOD, ESPECIALLY FO THOSE WHO HAVE BEEN BAKER ACTED.
R.S. says
What is most disconcerting here is that Floridians elected this ignorance-worshipper in a landslide. I wonder whether there is any sign whatsoever that these people are experiencing some eye-opening shame.
R.S. says
Actually, teaching is a matter of setting up environments such that learning may happen. Children are naturally inquisitive. It needs a very well rounded person to nurture and to develop that inquisitiveness, not a knuckle-wrapping sergeant to drill their developing minds to death with the three r’s or with any other pre-programmed schedule to be traversed in lock-step mode.
Michael Cocchiola says
DeSinking is attempting to Nazify Florida. Forced propaganda replaces science and history. Educators are suppressed and intimidated. Professional school administrators are replaced by political marionettes. Groups that have no experience with or connections with education are empowered to tell school systems what books can be read.
DeSinking will never be president. He is simply an awful, bigoted, unlikeable man with a talent only for promoting hate and ignorance. Our only hope is that his minions in the state legislature don’t make him governor for life.
Tired of it says
You mean the dollars that are left after the voucher giveaway to private schools? Yes, schools are for learning, history included, not the DeSantis version, real history. Try talking to a teacher and get a dose of reality.
Laurel says
According to The Hill (thehill.com):
“Americans’ understanding of basic facts about the U.S. government declined for the first time in six years, as fewer than half in a new survey could name all three branches of government.
The Annenberg Public Policy Center’s annual Constitution Day Civics Survey found a significant drop in the percentage of Americans who could name all three branches of government — executive, legislative, and judicial — falling by 9 percentage points from a year earlier.
About a quarter of Americans surveyed could not name a single branch.
The survey also found a decline in the number of respondents who could name any of the five freedoms guaranteed under the First Amendment.
Freedom of religion was named by 24 percent of those surveyed, falling from 56 percent from the previous survey. Those who named freedom of the press also declined sharply down by 30 percentage points from 50 percent in 2021.
Around 26 percent of respondents could not name any First Amendment freedoms. And the percentage of respondents who listed the right to bear arms — a right protected under the Second Amendment — as a First Amendment protection tripled from 2021 rising to 9 percent.”
Now, we’re going to go down from there thanks to the far right worrying about genitals and wombs. No folks, reading, writing and arithmetic clearly are not the far right’s agenda. They have told us exactly what they want: continue the dumbing down of America.
The far right are financially backing this backwards agenda. According to the Washington Examiner: “A host of billionaires and other wealthy businessmen have boosted Ron DeSantis as the Florida governor is expected to unveil a 2024 White House bid and compete with former President Donald Trump on the national stage, according to disclosures reviewed by the Washington Examiner.”
Unintelligent, uneducated people are easy to manipulate. If you throw religion in there, it’s even easier.
Ed says
So Laurel, tell us all what you really think about your neighbors.
Bet you agreed with Hillary. Careful when it rains…
Just for the record, some educated people are also easily manipulated.
As well as atheists, agnostics and even witches.
Doug says
It’s quite clear, Diane, that you’re a Republican hating liberal. Take your hate-filled columns somewhere else. I’m sure there’s a liberal news outlet far away that will welcome you with open arms.
Mary Jane says
Impeach DeathSantis.
Renee Mitchell says
Mental illness
FlaglerLive says
No need. We welcome her with open arms right here.
Sherry says
@marge. . . and “sieg heil” to you, too!
Sherry says
@doug. . . and, it’s quite clear that “you” are not a genuine Republican, but a Liberal hating trump/FOX cult member. . . I’ll take Diane with open arms anytime!!
R.S. says
I never cease to be amazed how much the debate elapses into nasty ad hominem attacks when some of these Trumpublicans weigh in on these topics. Don’t they have anything factual or logical to contribute other than calling people names?
Steve says
LMK How that works out for you Marge. Failed Governor and failed Presidential Campaign but you be you
Laurel says
Ed: You do rely a lot on assumptions.
Agree with Hillary on what? WTF about rain? Those comments were purely strange to me.
Yes, both the educated and uneducated can be manipulated, but the uneducated are far more vulnerable. As it stands now, DeSantis is attempting to do away with any kind of critical thinking. Why do you figure?
So, you want to know what I think about my neighbors. My neighbors are a mixture of Republicans, Democrats and NPAs. This is easily discovered on the web. I tend to like the established neighbors more than the new, wealthy ones. The established neighbors tend to be more concerned with our well being than the new ones.
Is that fine with you, or did you assume something else?
Debrina says
He has taken away our rights. Are you deaf or blind? I might understand.
Debrina says
Thank you Charles. So true.
Debrina says
We didn’t have but one other option. And we did not know DeSatan was a want a be dictator. He is a monster and very dangerous. More dangerous than Tramp.
Debrina says
Please please please do. It’s our only hope.
Debrina says
No one knew he was a Suddam Hussein want a be at the time. Plus we only had one other option, and he was indicted on different charges, knowing how DeSatan turned out, Gillium sounds much better. We didn’t know he was going to take people’s rights away and try to erase history. Didn’t know he hated Women, LGBTQ’s, Blacks, Brown’s, Asians, and who ever else he has it in for. Completely shocking that he has any support from any women other than his family bc he has set us back decades. He reminds me of somebody who grew up in the back woods some place, down a long dirt rd and went to and old wood frame church that hated everybody but people like him. Taught WRONG. Believes WRONG. He is delusional, his wife too. He is a very BAD person. I hope somebody finds something out on him worth impeaching him over, before he kills us all. Florida is hurtinggggggggggggg……..
Ed says
Laurel I’m very sorry you missed all 5 of the sarcastic metaphors in my post. Nothing was literal.
There wasn’t even an atom of assumption.
Protonbeam says
And on the flipside the nonsensical perennial failed quest for enlightenment through education and the glorification of self though pleasure, adoration, and entitlement has failed for centuries and continues to mar humanity with record rates of depression, suicide, violence, and crime.
Mike says
Wow, This headline is rough lol…..