Ron DeSantis' academic restrictions show he hopes to change history by censoring it | Libraries | The Guardian
By: the Guardian
DeSantis has positioned himself as a leader in the growing right-wing totalitarian censorship and cancel culture.
Trolling, taunting, spamming, and off topic comments may be removed at the discretion of group mods. NT members that vote up their own comments, repeat comments, or continue to disrupt the conversation risk having all of their comments deleted. Please remember to quote the person(s) to whom you are replying to preserve continuity of this seed. Any use of the phrase "Trump Derangement Syndrome" or the TDS acronym in a comment will be deleted.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Florida's Stop Woke Act and ban on African American studies will only deprive students of the right to think and learn
For some time now, conservative groups have pressured libraries and classrooms to remove certain "controversial" books from their shelves and their syllabi. These are texts that tell uncomfortable or unpopular truths about our nation's origins, including inequality, race, history, gender, sexuality, power and class - a range of subjects that a small but vocal group of Americans would prefer to ignore or deny.
These efforts achieved one of their most notable successes last April when the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, signed the Stop Woke Act, which prohibits in-school discussions about racism, oppression, LBGTQ+ issues and economic inequity. Books that have not been officially vetted and approved must be hidden or covered, lest teachers unknowingly break an ill-defined law against distributing pornography - a felony.
On 1 February, these pernicious restrictions on academic freedom spread beyond Florida, when the College Board announced its decision to severely restrict what can and cannot be taught in the newly created advanced placement class in African American studies. Cut from the curriculum (or in some cases made optional) was any discussion of Black Lives Matter, mass incarceration, police brutality, queer Black life and the Black Power movements of the 1960s and 70s. Writers who have been removed from the reading list include bell hooks, Angela Davis and Ta-Nehisi Coates.
These decisions are alarming and disturbing on so many levels that it's hard to decide which aspect is the most damaging and insidious. At risk are our foundational principles of free speech, our conviction that educators - and not politicians - should be writing up our lesson plans and deciding what transpires in our classrooms, our belief that students can (and need to) consider complicated issues.
As someone who has taught for decades, I can hardly imagine abruptly cutting off class discussions that have veered (as they inevitably will) into these now forbidden areas. Must we fear that our students will report us as insurrectionists and felons for having mentioned the grotesque racial disparities in our prison populations? I believe that education not only involves the transmission of hard information but also helps students to think for themselves, to weigh opposing arguments and to make informed decisions. How can these goals be accomplished when we are being told to (quite literally) whitewash our nation's history, to deny that we are walking on appropriated land in a country built by kidnapped and enslaved people, when we are being encouraged to lie about the very ground beneath our feet?
Students aren't as stupid as the Florida legislature seems to think, and by adopting these new regulations, we are only encouraging them to distrust their teachers and the system that so blatantly misrepresents the realities they so clearly observe around them.
In the past, authoritarianism - and the indoctrination that sustains it - has used educational systems to further its agenda. We can recall images of first-graders wearing little red kerchiefs and saluting the eastern bloc dictators, of students let out of class to welcome the Fuhrer to town. We know that democracy depends on the free and open exchange of ideas, on conversations that begin early in the life of its citizens - and that fascism thrives when only one point of view is permitted. DeSantis's rulings, and the campaigns that have engendered them, are inherently anti-democratic.
We cannot change history by censoring it. We cannot pretend that we were never a slave-holding society, that racism ceased to exist when Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. We cannot erase the past, or influence a young person's gender and sexuality by removing a book from the library. Students are not political pawns or ideologues-in-training. They are our future and it's frightening to imagine a future populated by citizens who were forbidden to argue and debate, to hear about a historical event from multiple perspectives and to learn to make the critical judgments and necessary distinctions that will help them navigate our increasingly complex and challenging world.
It's been noted that Ron DeSantis graduated with a degree in history from Yale, where he was presumably encouraged to engage in - and to learn from - the open debates that he is now attempting to stifle. Presumably, too, he learned what a good education is, what it means to be taught to think - and that is precisely what he is denying students who are less privileged than he and his Yale classmates.
It's a political decision designed to win over the Trump supporters that the governor will need in his bid for the presidency - that is, white working-class Americans who don't understand that their own children are also being denied the education that will help them overcome the class divisions that perpetuate our economic inequality. Private school students will still be able to study history in depth, to learn to reason, to process and assess the accuracy of what they are being told. It's the public school kids who will be funneled into the low-paying jobs, the dim futures for which their schooling has (not accidentally) prepared them.
'We've moved backwards': US librarians face unprecedented attacks amid rightwing book bans Read more
Ultimately, what's most troubling about the new restrictions and proscriptions is that historical facts are being recast as snowflake propaganda. The truth is being distorted or omitted at a moment when we, as a nation, have never so desperately needed to maintain our grip on reality.
Without being taught to distinguish truth from fiction, without being asked to think, without learning how this country evolved - a history not just of heroism and noble principles but of theft, brutality and crime - our students will be easy prey to every conspiracy theory that comes along. They will find it far more difficult to imagine and implement the important ways in which we hope to become a more equitable, less racist - and better educated - society.
-
Francine Prose is a former president of Pen American Center and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Tags
Who is online
491 visitors
There is a growing threat from right-wing "wokeism"
I'd rather be called woke by those duhsantis morons than thought of as a rwnj sleepwalker.
[✘]
I think that you mean right-wing ''comatosism''
Yes, I stand corrected. Thanks, Kavika.
... headuptheirassism
"African American studies. Cut from the curriculum (or in some cases made optional) was any discussion of Black Lives Matter, mass incarceration, police brutality, queer Black life and the Black Power movements of the 1960s and 70s. Writers who have been removed from the reading list include bell hooks, Angela Davis and Ta-Nehisi Coates."
Are these subjects really appropriate or relevant for high schoolers? It seems more like indoctrination that education. and for what good purpose?
[deleted]
Yes, those topics absolutely can be appropriate and relevant for high schoolers, in particular for those students who are more advanced intellectually and academically. Why wouldn't they be?
What about reading, writing, and arithmetic, as it was called in my day? Critical thinking and reasoning skills? Being able to communication effectively?
Why all the morbid obsession with race and sexual orientation or gender?
How does this "knowledge" benefit those students who are more advanced intellectually and academically?
One might think that reading, writing and math could be more important for the future development of children than understanding why BLM came into being. We see reports from school systems where schools have zero students who are able to read at their age level, etc.
Looking at PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) scores, the US places 30th for math scores, and a combined reading/writing/math scores placed at 25th. China is ranked #1 . And this continues despite the US spending more money per student than most other countries.
We start to see push back against this progressive theory on schools yet we still see the same people who defend the broken system. Leadership in the teachers unions as well as progressive leadership almost seem to believe that the movie Idiocracy was actually a blueprint to follow.
...
Those are essential, foundational elements for every student's education.
Do you want to erase black history, cancel black culture? I, personally, do not favor focusing on issues about sexual orientation with students, except possibly in what we used to call "health class" back when I was in school.
All knowledge is beneficial, or are you unable to understand that?
Reading, writing and math are essential, and so is history.
It's funny. Even when I was in 6th grade we had debates on things concerning the country as we sat in our history or English classes. Do you think that kids as young as 10 shouldn't be exposed to current events and encouraged to discuss them?
Of course...I went to progressive schools so what the hell do I know
What about fucking history?
Discuss current events? Absolutely yes. But when the basic skills of math/reading/writing are not being taught well enough for the children to succeed then I think that's an absolute issue/problem.
Yes, all of those are essential but when test scores continue to fall further and further behind don't you think there's a problem with the state of education in this country?
I don't necessarily disagree, although it has been reported that test scores fell significantly because of the problems created by the pandemic. With a return to more normalized education, things should improve.
I have insomnia, so.....
DuhSantis, like many Republicans, wants to rewrite history.
I hope he enjoys it when The Donald rewrites DuhSantis' personal history.