OPINION:
Florida governor Ron DeSantis denounced critical race theory and said under his leadership, not one penny of taxpayer money would be spent teaching children “to hate their country.”
“There’s no room in our classrooms for things like critical race theory,” Gov. DeSantis said yesterday. “Teaching kids to hate their country and to hate each other is not worth one red cent of taxpayer money.”
Yesterday, the Governor announced a $106 million proposal to make Florida the number one state in civics education, after receiving the money from President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus. Investments include partnerships with the public sector to get children interested in public service, training sessions, teacher credentialing in civics training, and developing a civics curriculum – which would exclude critical race training.
“Florida’s civics curriculum will incorporate foundational concepts with the best materials, and it will expressly exclude unsanctioned narratives like critical race theory and other unsubstantiated theories,” DeSantis said.
More governors should follow Mr. DeSantis’ lead.
Critical race theory is a toxic ideology that teaches children to view others through the prism of their skin-color and level of oppression. It’s based on the notion America is a fundamentally racist nation, with institutions designed to maintain white supremacy. Every human interaction is viewed as nothing more than a race-based power struggle, where personal responsibility and individual freedom are rejected.
Unfortunately, this destructive propaganda has infiltrated our children’s classrooms around the country. Buffalo Public Schools in New York have a “Black Lives Matter” curriculum where elementary aged children are asked the “essential question” of “What is the Black Lives Matter Movement and what is our role in it?” Another lesson, entitled “Do Black Lives Matter in America?” states as its objective that “students will be able to understand the need for the Black Lives Matter Movement.”
In Loudoun County, Virginia, schools have spent at least a half a million dollars in promoting race-based education to uncover “personal and institutional biases that prevent all people and especially people of color, from reaching their fullest potential.”
And the Chicago Public School district last year released a “toolkit to help foster productive conversations about race and civil disobedience” which includes links to materials written by the Southern Poverty Law Center and directs teachers toward Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Anti-Racist.
School associations around the country have vowed to indoctrinate our children with race-based teachings.
“We are living at a time of obscene inequities and merely trying to compensate is not enough,” the American Association of School Administrators (AASA) stated last year. “Equity is more than making things more accessible and AASA’s work on equity must go further and become actively anti-racist…Now is the time for all educational leaders to intensify our commitment to address inequities and work to dismantle systemic racism.”
The association said it would implement curriculum that is “diverse and culturally sensitive,” and put a renewed focus on “anti-racist curriculum in our history lessons, so that children are educated, informed and able to learn from our shared history.”
No subject is off the table – even mathematics has become controversial. A group of educators recently released a document calling for a transformation of math education that focuses on “dismantling white supremacy in math classrooms by visibilising the toxic characteristics of white supremacy culture with respect to math.”
Critical race theory divides Americans by race under the false pursuit of social justice. It’s a poisonous ideology that should be rejected in our nation’s classrooms, not embraced. Gov. DeSantis is correct to denounce it and other governors should follow his lead.
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