Andrew Spar, president of the NEA in Florida wrote the following opinion article for the Orlando Sentinel.
Florida’s public schools are the places where children of every race, religion and background learn and grow together. No matter what they look like or where they come from, all our children must have the freedom to learn the full and honest history of our nation. They deserve an education that teaches them about the past while helping them understand the present.
Accurate history is powerful knowledge that prepares our youngsters for the world while enabling them to create a better future by avoiding past mistakes.
Unfortunately, Gov. Ron DeSantis and his political appointees have made it clear that they don’t think Florida’s students deserve to learn the full truth of our nation’s history. Instead, DeSantis envisions a history curriculum that downplays the horror of slavery while ignoring pivotal events such as the 1957 resolution adopted by the Florida Legislature that proclaimed the Brown v. Board of Education decision, in which justices ruled that racial segregation in public schools is illegal, was “null, void, and of no force or effect.” When our state intentionally forgets historical events such as Florida’s response to Brown, how can we ever reckon with the racial disparities that are still present in public education today?
In another example of the ahistorical nature of the proposed standards, the Society of Friends (Quakers) can be found five times, whereas “racism” is only found once. Are we truly to believe that the legacy of Quakers is deserving of five times the importance of the legacy of racism when it comes to understanding African American experiences?
Yet, that is exactly what DeSantis wants — a history devoid of context, a history that denies students their freedom to learn uncomfortable truths. He is even willing to flout state law in order to keep students from having the freedom to learn. In 2020 amid great fanfare, legislators passed and DeSantis signed into law HB 1213, which among other things required Florida’s African American History Task Force to look for ways to incorporate the Ocoee Election Day Massacre into Florida’s required history instruction.
The task force produced a comprehensive report outlining exactly how to do this. Yet, here we are mere weeks away from the start of the 2023-2024 school year, and the recommendations still have not been implemented. While the proposed standards do (finally) mention Ocoee, where at least 30 African Americans are thought to have been killed, they do not come anywhere close to providing the comprehensive history Florida’s students must learn to understand the connections between the past and the present. It would appear DeSantis is scared that a complete and honest reckoning of our state’s history will force people to draw connections between the voter intimidation of the past and his current attacks on the rights of Black and Brown people to vote.
Rather than showing true leadership by implementing the task force’s recommendations and ensuring Florida’s students learn the whole truth about Florida’s history, DeSantis has engaged in a multi-year campaign to sow division between parents and educators. Screaming about indoctrination and bemoaning everything that he doesn’t like as “woke” might have been a winning strategy for DeSantis electorally, but his ambitions come at a steep price for an entire generation of children whose freedom to learn is under attack.
Fortunately, with each passing day more and more people across Florida, and indeed across the nation, are rejecting DeSantis’ fearmongering and attempts to divide us. Instead, we are uniting across our differences and demanding Florida politicians stop censoring what students learn in our public schools.
Florida may be only a steppingstone for DeSantis, but for millions of educators, parents and students, this is our forever home. We are rooted in our communities and fully invested in a brighter future for our children. We are fighting to ensure a world-class public education that reflects and celebrates student identities, experiences, histories and cultures in order to meet students where they are and prepare them to succeed wherever they may go. We are fighting for students’ freedom to learn.
Andrew Spar is president of the Florida Education Association, representing more than 150,000 education professionals.
© 2023 Orlando Sentinel
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I sincerely doubt that DeSanrus cares at all about providing sound educational opportunities for Florida children.
He would be fine with poorly educated residents who would be desperate to accept minimum wage jobs that have no career potential, that leave people scrambling to pay their bills.
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This is nothing new for Florida. A friend of mine who grew up there in the 1960-70s told me she was 18 & in college before she found out about the Holocaust — not details or commentary about it, but any mention that it ever happened. She learned this accidentally, watching a WWII documentary, & was understandably shocked to realize that an event of this magnitude was completely omitted from her education.
What I find most disturbing about this is it suggests it appears it only takes one generation to erase history.
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Yup. Down the Memory Hole it goes.
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Thank you Andrew Spar and the Florida Education Association for standing up for our children’s right to learn ACCURATE historical facts.
If German students can learn about Germany’s genocide and concentration camps (another form of enslavement) of Jews and others who dared disagreement with Hitler, are DeSantis’ and Florida’s popular sentiments about our own history more fragile and timid than the Germans’ to learn historical facts?
I HOPE students, their parents, and grandparents feel discomfort about slavery and discrimination. It led to our most deadly war. Racism still kills to this day. If our young people don’t learn this from all of us who are their family, teachers, and role models, we are failing them and with very dangerous consequences.
I want our nation to live up to the promise of our founding documents that we are all legally equal, capable of self governance, and a beacon of democracy’s virtue to the world as well as at home. Our students are due nothing less.
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Well said, Ms. Papas!
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Bob,
The Florida Senate President, Kathleen Passidomo, said,
“School choice is here for every Florida family.” In 2020, she was an elector for Donald Trump. She attended a private, Catholic University located in D.C. -Trinity Washington University founded by the Sisters of Notre Dame.
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The Catholic long game in education, does correct info. for students have anything to do with it?
The legal scholar most responsible for advancing religious charter schools, according to Frederick Hess is Nicole Stelle Garnett who has been friends with Amy Comey Barrett for a long time (the Catholic publication, The Tablet, 10-8-2020, has pictures of the friends together, at Notre Dame).
In 2012, Prof. Garnett wrote a paper, “Are Charters Enough Choice…?”. The paper’s conclusion quotes Diane Ravitch’s 2010 book. Immediately preceding the Ravitch quote, Garnett wrote, “But, asking Catholic schools to secularize to secure public funds…is unfortunate in my view.”
We learned the solution when Trump appointed right wing Catholics to SCOTUS.
In reference to Amy Comey Barrett’s confirmation hearings, Garnett said, “I hope the senators have better sense than to drag that out (Comey’s faith) again.”
Religionists and the exposure of a sect’s dogma…priest pedophilia coverup… covertly the US became a Catholic theocracy.
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