State says every lesson ‘based on history’

DeSantis’ administration has spent nearly $6 million to train public school teachers across the state on how to teach civics as part of the governor’s initiative. The first training sessions were June 20-22, at Broward College in Davie. Teachers in Hillsborough County are training this week.

The civics training is the latest effort in a long line of education policies that aim to fight what DeSantis and conservative education reformers say are “woke ideologies” in public schools.

It also provides a snapshot of how national groups, including Hillsdale College, a politically influential private Christian college in southern Michigan, are working with the DeSantis administration to reshape education in the state. The goal is to put a greater emphasis on civics than on socially divisive issues such as race and gender identity, which DeSantis has said is an effort to reorient teaching away from “indoctrination and back towards education.” But to several educators who went through the state’s training it felt like a broader effort to impose a conservative view on historical events.

“We are constantly under attack, and there is this false narrative that we’re indoctrinating children, but that is nothing compared to what the state just threw in new civic educators’ faces. That’s straight-up indoctrination,” said Segal, a 46-year-old teacher with 19 years of experience.

The Florida Department of Education is leading the workshops, which were developed with the help of Hillsdale College and other groups. The Bill of Rights Institute, founded by Charles Koch in 1999, is one of those groups. The state aims to train about 2,500 teachers in 10 sessions across the state.

The three-day sessions are voluntary, but teachers get a $700 stipend as an incentive to attend. Under the governor’s civics initiative, teachers this fall will also be eligible for a $3,000 bonus if they complete a 60-hour online course on the new civics standards and earn a “Civics Seal of Excellence Endorsement.”

The Herald/ Times reached out to John Duebel, the state’s director of social studies and the arts for the bureau of standards and instructional support, but he declined to be interviewed and referred questions to the Florida Department of Education’s communications office. A request for comment from the governor was also referred to the Department of Education.

“Every lesson we teach is based on history, not ideology or any form of indoctrination. Let us know if you are actually interested in reviewing the coursework and understanding it for yourself,” the Florida Department of Education said in a statement on Friday when asked about the session and educators’ concerns. On Tuesday afternoon, the department provided the slide presentations, which were reviewed by the Herald/ Times. The documents provided did not include the trainers’ comments for each slide.