By Diane Roberts
Can you show us on the doll where education hurt you?
According to the Right, schools and colleges are hotbeds of anti-American degeneracy propagated by teachers hell bent on indoctrinating the young into evil opinions and all manner of weirdness, thus hastening the nation’s descent into the kind of depravity that spurs atrocities such as painting rainbow crosswalks, wearing inflatable frog suits, and flying upside-down American flags at “No Kings” marches.
Y’all clutching those pearls yet?
The very people always telling us to “do your own research” don’t really want you to do your own research, unless they get to pick the sources.
They don’t want you to listen to people who’ve spent years and years in universities and labs, no academically rigorous studies, no evidence-based information, no verifiable facts.
Who needs expertise?
Florida, you will not be surprised to hear, is a model for the nation, walking backward into the future.
Rep. Tom Fabricio (R-Miami Lakes) has filed a bill demanding classroom teachers take an oath to uphold the constitutions of Florida and the United States and promise to conduct themselves “in a professional, independent, objective, and nonpartisan manner.”
They would swear “that I will uphold the highest standards of academic integrity and professional ethics; that I will foster a respectful learning environment for all students, which promotes critical thinking, civic responsibility, and lifelong learning; and that I will serve as a positive role model in both conduct and character, so help me God.”
Couple of issues with this: 1. Classroom teachers already sign an oath to uphold both constitutions; 2. Would this new oath also apply to teachers at schools that take taxpayer-funded vouchers?
What if some school board or some parent decides a class on evolution is “partisan” because most Democrats will tell you the earth is older than 6,000 years?
Anti-science silliness has long been part of Florida’s brand. We’ve attacked evolution and championed teaching Creationism and “Intelligent Design.”
As for the “positive role model in both conduct and character” stuff, who gets to say what that means?
Do evangelicals accept that a gay teacher can be a “positive role model”? What about a teacher who posts something the DeSantis administration doesn’t like on her private social media?
At least three K-12 teachers have been fired for something they said about Charlie Kirk, the ultra-conservative campus activist who was murdered last month.
University professors have also lost their jobs or been sanctioned, often for quoting Kirk’s own words.
He’s the one who said it was “worth it to have a cost of — unfortunately — some gun deaths every single year” in order to preserve the Second Amendment.
Swearing oaths
You know that Constitution thing? The one teachers (and politicians, lawyers, etc.) swear to uphold? It guarantees all of us the right to free expression, even if it upsets the government.
But the DeSantis administration seems happy to trash that pesky First Amendment whenever they feel like it, forbidding educators to discuss systemic racism — no learning about redlining, unequal access to justice, Jim Crow, habitual dumping of toxic waste in minority communities, or denying Black veterans access to GI Bill benefits — policing college course descriptions for naughty words such as “gender” and “decolonize,” or hyperventilating over the possibility sex might be mentioned in the classroom.
They’re also happy to trash the Establishment Clause.
To be fair, Florida hasn’t gone quite as demented as Texas, where a state-sponsored (though not officially required) curriculum is basically Bible study.
But given Florida wants to be Texas when it grows up, this might be what we have to look forward to.
A law passed last year allows “volunteer chaplains” in schools. Counselors and psychologists cost money; the district doesn’t have to pay some unlicensed, untrained rando preacher with time on his hands.
So far, few school systems have taken the state up on its offer to install a member of the God Squad in taxpayer-funded institutions.
Hernando County, however, has taken the plunge with the Rev. Jack Martin, a failed Republican congressional candidate and member of the “Black Robe Regiment,” an outfit dedicated to demolishing the wall between Church and State.
Martin has called for President Barack Obama to be arrested and thinks public schools force kids “to believe stuff they shouldn’t.”
He’s also written a song in praise of the “martyr” Charlie Kirk.
Blackmail
This is on-brand for Florida, where school vouchers are intended to destroy public education, and universities are threatened with financial penalties if they hire the wrong professors or teach the wrong things.
To demonstrate who’s boss, Rep. Kevin Steele, R-Dade City, a backbencher clearly looking to grab a little publicity, has filed a bill that would force all 40 Florida colleges and universities to name streets after Charlie Kirk.
The bill even specifies exactly which streets: Chieftain Way at FSU, Stadium Road at UF, and West Osceola at FAMU, to name but a few.
If the streets don’t get renamed, colleges and universities will be defunded.
Yet again: issues.
- This is yet another in the long series of governmental attacks on university autonomy and may have constitutional problems, too. As one UF grad student with a law degree, herself a Kirk fan and member of Turning Points USA, said, it “raises a huge red flag.”
- Students across the state are largely opposed. A computer science major at UF pointed out Kirk “wasn’t some civil rights activist,” but went around “actively spewing hatred.”
Tina Meyaart, a student in Communications at FSU, called it “grossly disrespectful,” especially since Kirk was pro-gun and the person charged with the mass shooting at Florida State was allegedly a member of Kirk’s TPUSA.
- There is no West Osceola at FAMU. That street was renamed Rudy Hubbard Way earlier this year.
Is the Legislature really going to force the nation’s premier Black public university to ditch the name of a road honoring the Hall of Fame football coach who led the Rattlers to two Black College National Championships in favor of a guy who once called the Civil Rights Act “a huge mistake,” among other offensive comments?
This is Florida. The answer may end up being yes.
Slash and burn
President Donald Trump’s slash-and-burn policies have cost Florida universities millions in research money. As of May, FSU had lost $53 million in grants from the National Science Foundation, USAID, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Department of Agriculture, and others.
At USF, EPA grants that would have allowed the university to bring scientific solutions to contaminated water in poor communities got axed.
FAMU lost $4.9 million that would have promoted climate-friendly hemp growing. USDA called the program “far-left.”
Ron DeSantis has not said one word in defense of Florida’s colleges and universities.
Why would he? His administration despises education in general and higher education in particular.
It’s obvious why: The more you know, the less gullible you are, the more willing to question authority, the more able to imagine and empathize with the lives of people who aren’t like you.
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.
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