The Florida Board of Education may have hit rock bottom, which is saying something considering it’s Florida. At last Wednesday’s board meeting in Orlando, the Board agreed to adopt new standards for how Black history should be taught in schools, which includes teaching middle schools students that “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”
The Board defended the new standards, citing 16 historical figures who they claim justified the new teaching standard. The problem? Some of the figures cited were either never enslaved or escaped from slavery, including Crispus Attucks, who [checks notes] was shot and killed in the Boston Massacre. Aside from the irony of claiming the first unarmed Black man killed by the police benefitted from being a slave, the new standards proposed by the Florida Board of Education are simply ahistorical and, frankly, quite dumb.
Sadly, this is par for the course in Ron DeSantis’ Florida, where the wannabe strongman is attempting to rewrite history and push immigrant, Black, and LGBTQ+ communities further to the margins, all while ignoring the needs of the working class in a climate that’s quickly becoming unlivable. So it’s no surprise that the Board of Education, which is full of DeSantis appointees, would attempt to drag the state even further backwards with a history curriculum that’s laughably illogical.
Related: Florida Is Banning Children's Books That Merely Mention Racism
The Florida Board of Education doesn’t seem to understand basic concepts like “cause and effect” or “circular reasoning.” And while we're more confident in your critical thinking, we figured we should at least entertain Florida's goofy notion that enslaved people were better off after centuries of inhumane treatment. Below, you'll find a decision tree that gets to the bottom of this asinine question. The debate ends here.
