Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
When DeSantis stifles dissent, it makes us all victims
Gov. Ron DeSantis signed another bill to elevate his political profile. This one requires public schools to lecture students about the victims of communism. DeSantis staged the event at the Freedom Tower in Miami and seized the moment to compare the Biden administration to the Castros who ruled Cuba for six decades.
“What they are doing,” the governor said of the president and his team, “to try to stifle dissent, to try to elevate a chosen political narrative that is endorsed by the regime, and to try to marginalize dissenters, is not what is a free society.”
Talk about irony. DeSantis aimed those comments at Cuban-American voters after a wave of news reports showed how his own regime intends to dictate how students, teachers and university professors in Florida can think and teach. Fidel himself would have approved.
The most recent flashpoint is math textbooks. On Good Friday, school districts learned — with no warning — that the Department of Education’s censors had banned so many books that districts were left with only one publisher. The DeSantis regime refused to release details of that decision. Now we see why.
According to the department, the banned books tried to sneak critical race theory — known as CRT — into math instruction. Florida has banned teaching CRT in public schools, where it never was taught in the first place.
In fact, as the South Florida Sun Sentinel and Orlando Sentinel reported, only one member of the panel that reviewed the math textbooks complained about CRT. She’s a member of Moms For Liberty, a right-wing group that backed the “don’t say gay” bill and other legislation grouped under the catchy but misleading label of “parents’ rights.”
Among other things, that reviewer had a problem with a question about climate change. The author, she complained, “talks about a climate crisis as if it’s a proven fact.” That’s because it is.
Another question concerned soccer star Megan Rapinoe, most valuable player of the 2019 Women’s World Cup that the U.S. won. Students were asked to calculate how much money the women lost in salary compared to members of the men’s national team.
The salary gap between men and women is a proven fact. The women players settled their lawsuit against the U.S. Soccer Federation in February for $24 million.
Only math experts were supposed to review the textbooks. But others got a look. One was Jordan Adams, a “civic education specialist” at the right-wing Hillsdale College in Michigan. Though Adams didn’t cite CRT, he objected to some of the books.
Hillsdale invited former Florida Education
Commissioner Richard Corcoran to speak in May 2021. During his speech, Corcoran touted the need for “critical thinking.” In 2019, with Corcoran’s support, the Legislature passed a civics education bill (HB 807) that lists Hillsdale among the groups that must review the curriculum. More irony.
Not surprisingly, the Department of Education challenged the newspapers’ reporting. It must be embarrassing to see a cover story blown so thoroughly. The DeSantis regime disrupted school districts to indulge a right-wing extremist.
We’ve been here before. The 2021 Legislature passed a civics education bill. DeSantis vetoed it and attempted a cover story that the legislation promoted certain “ideologies.” Actually, a right-wing columnist for the conservative National Review claimed — falsely — that the bill would lead to discussions of critical race theory. The governor listened to the outlier.
For the last two years, as DeSantis has soared nearer and nearer to the sun of presidential aspirations, Florida has sought to control discussions of history, gender and race from kindergarten through college.
Students lose
Call it dumbing down. Call it indoctrination. By whatever description, students lose as DeSantis seeks to “stifle dissent” (his words), to “elevate a chosen political narrative that is endorsed by the regime,” and to “marginalize dissenters.”
In Brevard County, school district officials have taken down a 40,000-book online library available to students. They said staffers didn’t have time to review all the books to determine whether rightwing censors would object.
Meanwhile, University of Florida President Kent Fuchs gave faculty members a slide presentation on how to avoid violating the governor’s so-called “Stop W.O.K.E.” law. Failure to adhere to the regime’s thinking, Fuchs said, could cost UF $100 million in state money.
Corcoran’s successor at the Department of Education, Manny Diaz, and the department’s spokeswoman called the papers’ reporting on math textbooks “false.” It wasn’t.
Good math teachers make students show their work. When the DeSantis regime showed its work, the truth came out.
The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. Editorials are the opinion of the Board and written by one of its members or a designee. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.