bitchy | Florida’s new academic standards: ‘enslaved people developed skills for personal benefit’

Whenever I read about the “anti-woke” legislation aimed at public schools and public libraries, I reflect back on my own public school education in Virginia. It was dreadfully incomplete when it came to the American history of slavery, colonialism and genocide of Native Americans, but also… there were actual conversations about those sensitive topics, real historical context about what happened during the Trail of Tears, the Civil War, Reconstruction, Jim Crow and the Civil Rights Movement. Like, of course there was a lot of sugarcoating and a lot of “and then Dr. Martin Luther King Jr flew in with a cape and saved everything,” but it’s shocking to realize that my incomplete and sugarcoated public school education in Virginia three decades ago was probably much more nuanced and historically accurate than whatever is happening in Florida right now. Speaking of, Florida Gov. Meatball Ron DeSantis has now mandated that Florida public schools teach kids that enslaved people were actually learning skills for personal benefit. This piece of sh-t.

Newly approved academic standards from Florida’s Board of Education will require middle schools to teach that enslaved people “developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit” — a line that has ignited significant controversy among teachers’ groups.

The standards, which were approved Wednesday, come in response to the state’s 2022 “Stop WOKE Act,” which stated that race must be taught in “an objective manner” that does not “indoctrinate or persuade students to a particular point of view.” The measure pushed far-right lawmakers’ rhetoric that teaching Black history makes White people feel ashamed, instructing that no student should be made to feel “guilt” or “responsibility” for actions previously committed by members of the same race.

According to the new education guidelines, middle school teachers must now teach students about “the various duties and trades performed by slaves (e.g., agricultural work, painting, carpentry, tailoring, domestic service, blacksmithing, transportation).” A benchmark clarification listed in the standards includes the note that teachers should also instruct that enslaved people developed skills, “in some instances… for their personal benefit.”

Another guideline directs teachers to instruct high schoolers about “acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans” when teaching about the rebuilding of Black communities during Reconstruction. The standards list the 1920 Ocoee Massacre, in which more than 30 African Americans were killed by a White mob while attempting to vote, among the examples of “acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans.”

According to the Florida Education Association (FEA), a statewide teachers’ union, several organizations and individuals spoke in opposition to the proposed standards in a public hearing Wednesday, and asked the board to table the standards until they could be revised. But, “when public comment ended, the board voted to adopt them. There was no discussion,” the FEA wrote on Twitter. In a press release sent immediately after the standards were adopted, the FEA called them “a big step backward.”

[From People]

Can someone stop white people? My God. Here in Virginia, our governor basically successfully ran on a platform of banning books written by Black authors. That’s happening all over the country too, in states with Republican governors and Republican-majorities in their state houses. This is the battleground they’ve chosen: indoctrinating children on a false American history, a literal whitewashing of Black American history, a censorship of Black authors and an erasure of Black experience. The whole thing is so offensive and grotesque.

Photos courtesy of Cover Images.