Ron DeSantis’s big idea: Make Florida students ignorant
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who earned two Ivy League degrees, has apparently decided that making Florida schools and universities the laughingstock of the country is good politics. The Republican already went after public school teachers with his “don’t say gay” bill, championed an effort to prevent instruction about history that might upset students (make that White students), and banned Advanced Placement classes in African American studies. Now, he has decided to shred the curriculums of Florida’s public universities, inviting students interested in unapproved subjects to go to California (!) or other states that don’t control what can and cannot be taught.
As with press freedom and democracy more generally, academic freedom is under assault around the world . The University World News recently reported that, “over the past decade, academic freedom has declined in more than 22 countries representing more than half of the world’s population, four billion people, says the Academic Freedom Index: Update 2023 (AFI) .” Though the Czech Republic Luxembourg, Sweden, Peru, Portugal and Canada enjoy robust protection of academic freedom, the AFI report says, “autocracies like China, and increasingly authoritarian countries [from] India, to fully-fledged democracies like Britain and the United States” show measurable declines in academic freedom, a cornerstone of freedom of thought and democratic self-governance.
It’s not hard to figure out that the threat to vibrant, free discourse and to educational independence comes primarily from right - wing nationalists. “Since 2016, the year Donald J. Trump was elected president, America’s AFI score has declined from 0.92 to 0.79,” the University World News report found. “This figure puts the United States in the top third of the fifth quintile, below South Africa and above Kenya.”
Anti-democratic, nationalist movements have historically attacked universities as hotbeds of elite and foreign influence, seeking to bend instruction to the will of the state and turn academics into handmaidens of state propaganda. Right - wing pundits who have whined incessantly about the disfavored status of conservative academics (largely because of peer or student pressure) have had precious little to say about state-driven attacks against academic freedom from a petty autocrat . (Their caterwauling about political correctness on campus is the sort of projection and victimology that seeks to cast oppressors as victims and tyrants as saviors of Western culture.)
DeSantis might get his wish. Parents, students and businesses seeking well-educated workers might decide it is better to decamp from Florida for states that prepare students for the real world, help them function in a diverse society and foster intellectual excellence. Sadly, that will leave Floridians less prosperous and less capable of performing the obligations of informed citizenry. Perhaps that’s the point.
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Full disclosure, I seeded this article solely because Jennifer Rubin and WaPo irritate certain folks. To them I say tough shit.
you're a precious addition to this forum
Oh I know ...
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I'm sorry. I thought he was being a jerk
As some CSI ass often said, "Never apologize!"
trump was on CSI???
Whenever they need a pompous denier.
... or to reset the parameters on a polygraph.
No...that would be NCIS....Gibbs
You corrected me, outstanding! I stopped watching when Ziva left the show.
So. You won't be able to take any history or sociology classes that teach real world history or problems.
What's next? Banning books in the English Department?
Why stop there, braille causes unsightly telltale calluses on one's fingers?
DeSantis doesn't want the kids to learn about Florida's history of slavery, Jim Crow, and associated bigotry that was alive and well into the 1970s.
“DeSantis doesn't want the kids to learn…”
Enough said.
"Facts" of and by themselves are disinterested; DeSantis is not, he is intentionally pandering to a demographic he needs to win.
My comment was based entirely on your usage of the word.
You should know when you ask leftists for facts, you either get silence or some ambiguous comment that has nothing to do with what you ask for facts about.
Today is no different.
Sir, I must object, my screen is in Braille and all caps really hurt my fingertips, however, kudos for not using a bold font.
that ignorant asshole got banned, multiple times...
One can be banned multiple times? I must up my game!
Is this off topic and of no value, or trolling, or Skirting the CoC?
You appear to be the expert lately. Do digress.
Even if this were true, (it's not), It will be a loooooooong time before Florida kids catch up with blue city/state kids when it comes to unintelligence.
This is all about the white Christian nationalist agenda, which DeSantis wants to advance.
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Or the rich should pay more so i don't have to pay my fair share.
Many of us succeeded just fine without coursework titled like “gay studies” or “reparations 101” so I think Florida will do just fine. But keep pushing the narrative Goebbelites
Meanwhile Florida’s population is bursting at the seams while more “enlightened” states are looking for someone to turn out the lights.
Boom, boom ...... out go the lights!
omg
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But I took you off JUST THIS ONE TIME so I can reply to you.
Actually, no. He's off permanent ignore and in double secret probation
Now...no more fun and games. Let's be nice to Hallux and stay on topic, boys
Pshaw! It tickles when they try to be mean and anyhoot I traded in FOX's anal gazing for Al Jazeera's navel gazing on my cable.
Florida sucks when it comes to education.
Florida
#1 in Education
#10 in Best States Overall
Rankings: Education - States With the Best Education (usnews.com)
Doh!
What we are seeing here is a MAJOR fear of a DeSantis presidency.
Someone who has similar ideas as Trump, has a successful governorship where he won by 20 percent his second term and is decades younger than Trump.
The man hasn't even proclaimed his candidacy yet..
not according to Newsweek
Florida ranks 34
34. Florida
- Education index: 95.11
- Less than high school: 4.8%
- 9th to 12th grade, no diploma: 7.0%
- High school graduate or equivalent: 28.6%
- Some college, no degree: 19.9%
- Associate's degree: 9.8%
- Bachelor's degree: 18.9%
- Graduate or professional degree: 11.0%
Got anything more recent than 2021?
And from a non far left resource?
USnews and Newsweek swim in the same channel.
There are a lot of job openings for Shabbos goys to "turn out the lights". Hours are good and you can get a free B'rit.
You sound well informed. Go for it.
Actions speak louder than words. Florida outlawed the teaching of CRT and in 2022 DeSantis signed the ''Stop Woke Act'' which the courts have ruled against and most recently proposed banning funding for Black Studies at the state's colleges.
And from the article:
In each of those bans, race, slavery, and Jim Crow would have to be discussed to have an exchange of thoughts, ideas and history.
Nothing is stopping these subjects to be discussed.
They can't be discussed in public universities
Yep...they shouldn't be teaching lies and misinformation.
Slavery, Jim Crow, and discrimination are lies...LOLOLOL what world are you inhabiting?
Who said that?
Everyone knows they are not lies.
It is well established that most democrats happily participated in each of these.
Most democrats who "happily participated in each of these" are long dead.
It is also well known that the parties switched positions in the 1960s.
That’s what all the racist say, but when challenged to name 5 who changed parties they can’t. Byrd, Clinton, Wallace Biden are all still democrats.
My comment was that the parties switched positions, with no mention of any specific member of either party. Perhaps if I said the ideology changed it would help you understand what happened at that time.
In 1964, Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law. In the 1964 election, Republican candidate Barry Goldwater publicly opposed the new law, arguing that it expanded the power of the federal government to a dangerous level.
It was this argument that led to a final, decisive switch. Black voters, who had historically been loyal to the Republican Party because of the 1866 Civil Rights Act, had already been switching to the Democratic Party.
However, upon hearing Goldwater’s argument against the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the majority of Black voters left the Republican Party in favor of the Democrats. They saw the Democratic Party as advocates for equality and justice.
You'll find today that the majority of minority groups lean and vote Democrat.
It seems quite difficult for Republicans/conservatives to explain why the majority of minorities vote Democrat except to fall back on the old trope of ''it's the free stuff''....
Today the Democrat party is known as the liberal party and the Republicans are known as the conservative party and huge switch from their positions prior to 1960.
Of course it is but ..... gotta push the narrative.
Push it!
Push it real good!
Classic propaganda tactic.
Tell a lie enough times it becomes the truth.
For mindless lemmings that is.
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That comes with partisanship and you are far from being immune.
“…far from being immune.”
…light years…
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... next universe to the right.
One of the easiest things to do!!!
we're still waiting for that demonstration...
Make students ignorant?
US students are already ignorant in comparison to many other countries in math, science and reading,
As our workers are higher paid than those in most of the countries out scoring us, our workers are increasingly less competitive.
We have an increasing teacher shortage.
So why not demand our teachers teach more outside of math, science and history?
Why not indeed!
Lookie here, a wee culture war post to excite leftyland into thinking the sky is falling.
I could quote some here from the right claiming that it has fallen.
One thing that’s falling for sure. Test scores.
Hooray liberal union teachers!
They’re going full “nut bag” in Florida, crafting solutions in search of problems.
Institutions like the 3/5 compromise? Like slavery? Like Jim Crow? Like Alien & Sedition Act? Like Dred Scott? Like segregation? Like Chinese Exclusion? Like Japanese internment camps? Like a century and a half of male-only suffrage? Like housing discrimination? I mean SHIT you can go on and on. WTF are going to teach in these fantasy courses?
that's easier for them than solving the real problems.
Have a question for some on this thread:
It seems the argument for the republican party has always been anti-big government, i.e. a government that is overly controlling, over-reaching, telling people how to live their personal lives, pushing some "religious" belief onto the masses. Yet, DeSantis and others are doing just that, yet some here have no problem with it.
My question is, why in this instance do you see no problem with what is obviously an over-reaching person with governing power telling the people of FL what to do, what they can learn, what they can't learn, read, take in school?
I mean, is it that you are the exact same type of person as DeSantis? Have his same f'd up thinking, even if he is "pandering" to the racist dumbasses in Florida? And how long before he starts believing his own hype, if he hasn't already?
republicans proclaiming one thing while doing the exact opposite is normal for them.