Leslie Postal of the Orlando Sentinel reports that the Florida Depatment of Education has banned the College Board’s AP Psychology course because it includes the study of gender and sexual identity. In Florida, these topics are not permitted in the state’s schools and colleges. Florida believes that if no one teaches gender or sexual identity, students will agree they don’t exist, and eventually they will disappear.
Postal writes:
Florida will not allow public school students to take Advanced Placement psychology because the course includes lessons on sexual orientation and gender identity, topics forbidden by the state, the College Board said Thursday.
If so, that would mean that a week before school starts in many districts, about 5,000 Central Florida students and about 27,000 statewide may not be able to take a class they signed up to tackle in the 2023-24 school year.
“We are sad to have learned that today the Florida Department of Education has effectively banned AP Psychology in the state by instructing Florida superintendents that teaching foundational content on sexual orientation and gender identity is illegal under state law,” the College Board said in a statement.
The organization runs the 40-course AP program, which aims to offer high school students introductory college courses. Last school year, nearly 27,000 Florida students took AP psychology, which has been offered in the state since 1993.
“This element of the framework is not new: gender and sexual orientation have been part of AP Psychology since the course launched 30 years ago. As we shared in June, we cannot modify AP Psychology in response to regulations that would censor college-level standards for credit, placement, and career readiness.”
In May, Florida asked the College Board to review all its courses to make sure they comply with Florida law, which because of new laws and rules, prohibits teaching about sexual orientation and gender identity as well as certain race-related topics.
According to the College Board, the Florida Department of Education told school superintendents they could offer AP psychology only if lessons on sexual orientation and gender identity were omitted. But the College Board said those are part of the class and, if deleted, the course will not be able to carry the AP designation.
In June, the College Board told the state it would not alter the AP psychology course, which had been taught at 562 Florida high schools.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
DeSantis and his fascist overloads are waging war against not only human nature but history. Homosexuality has been documented in Western Society as far back as the Ancient Greeks. Virtually every civilization since has had some record of the presence homosexuality, from Ancient Greeks, to Rome, to Victorian England, rightful to the present day.
The use of LGBT to replace the term homosexuality didn’t start until 1988.
Before then, the primary term was homosexuality. “Terms used to describe homosexuality have gone through many changes since the emergence of the first terms in the mid-19th century. In English, some terms in widespread use have been sodomite, Achillean, Sapphic, Uranian, homophile, lesbian, gay, effeminate, queer, homoaffective, and same-gender attracted. Some of these words are specific to women, some to men, and some can be used of either. Gay people may also be identified under the umbrella terms LGBT.”
“Scientists perceive homosexual behavior in animals to different degrees. Multiple current sources from the 2010s and later state that same-sex sexual behavior has been observed in over 1,500 species.”
What DeSantis is doing is launching an inquisition of sorts focusing on LGBT, WOKE and CRT. The more power DeSantis has, the more ruthless he will become to stamp out what clearly is natural human behavior that has probably been around as long as our species, maybe not for every human but for a significant number. He won’t get rid of that behavior, no matter how Nazi he gets.
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DeSatan’s obsessions with gays and lesbians and trans people is very, very creepy.
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I tried to make Rhonda Santis take off, but it never got traction.
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FLERP, many gay men in Florida, I have heard, use the term Rhonda Santis.
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Yeah. Too bad.
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Outstanding! It’s my favorite.
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If the College Board were not —–s (paid sex workers ) they would stop offering AP certifications in the State. But that must be a different world.
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Who can forget David Coleman using the mass shooting at Marjorie Stoneham Douglas high school in Parkland Florida as a sales pitch for AP?
As long as Coleman is head, College Board will continue to prostitute itself.
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But, but,David Coleman was chosen the Decider for the Rest of Us by Master of the Universe Bill Gates himself!
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Joel, I want to apologize for some things I wrote in comments to you over the last several months. There’s one comment in particular that I’m thinking of, but there may have been others. I was angry, and it was unnecessary, rude and frankly cruel. I’ll try to do better.
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FLERP!
If I had thin skin I would not comment on line. Thank you for the apology but it is unnecessary, Diane’s page is mild compared to other forums. That said I will raise the bar as well. No body ever accused me of not throwing stones.
Have a good day
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Good. AP is a crock to begin with.
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This is supposed to be kids who are prepared to handle college level material, now being told they are too stupid to make their own critical evaluation of what’s in the curriculum, because they might fall prey to the groomers. Can the University of Florida system be far behind?
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This is Florida’s version of The Spanish Inquisition. Everyone is guilty, even when there is no crime, just victims of ideological warfare. The young people of the state will pay the price for censorship and denial of access to what students in other states can learn without government interference. In Ron DeSantis’ Florida suppression and repression are served daily, and everyone is expected to live in accordance right wing Christian values regardless of what they believe. Outrageous!
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How do you know that you are dealing with an ideology? Because it involves denying reality.
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Note also that one of the traits that sets a psychosis apart from a mere neurosis. The psychosis involves distortions of reality. If someone is uncomfortable in crowded places like a play at intermission, that’s a neurosis. If the person is uncomfortable in such crowds because they think that the shape-shifting aliens there might abduct them, that’s psychosis.
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cx: Note also that that is one of the traits that sets a psychosis apart from a mere neurosis.
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That is why I say: psychosis now, psychosis tomorrow, Psychosis forever!
Reality is for weak people. If you cannot define it more than one way, what good is your reality. I like my reality sur.
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fair enough
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OK. Let’s face it. Repugnicans today just aren’t very bright. Exhibit 1: An overwhelming number of them want as their president, again, the guy who thought that stealth airplanes were actually invisible, who was determined in court to be a rapist, and who carried out several simultaneous plots to overthrow the elected government of the United States. Exhibit 2: Repugnicans think that the fact that young people in the United States are experimenting with sexual orientation and gender identity because they are being taught to do so in school. Uh, no. These two phenomena are PART of a GENERAL SHIFT IN CULTURAL VALUES in our country, and no amount of trying to micromanage teachers and curricula is going to change that, the actual cause.
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cx: Repugnicans think that young people in the United States are experimenting with sexual orientation and gender identity because they are being taught to do so in school.
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AGREE, Bob. I call this state Flori-“DUH” for good reasons.
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Here, btw, is what the fuss is about:
Gender and Development
Biopsychological (Neuropsychological) Theory
Concentrates on the nature element in the nature/nurture combo that produces our gender role
behaviors that a culture associates with a gender
Look for more subtle gender differences
Women have larger corpus callosums
may affect how the brain hemispheres communicate
Psychodynamic Theory (Freud)
Oedipus and Electra complex
Proper gender development:
child realizes that they can’t beat their same sex parents for the attention of the other parent
child identifies with the same sex parent instead
Social-Cognitive Theory
Concentrate on the effects of society and our own thoughts about gender on role development
Social psychologists
look at how we react to boys and girls differently
Cognitive psychologists
focus on the internal interpretations we make about the gender messages we get from the environment
Gender-schema theory
we internalize messages about gender into cognitive rules about how each gender should behave
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That and saying “gay.” LOL.
Florida wants to grow the next generation of idiots.
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In a year or two most of these bright young people will be going off to college after their cloistered Florida public school experience where they will face culture shock in most universities today.
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Yeah. These innocents will be in real trouble. Alas.
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Having taught in Florida, I can tell you that these kids are far, far from cloistered, despite their fundamentalist milieu. I call Florida the home of the feral teenager. There’s a reason why these fundy states have such high levels of teenage pregnancy, STDs, alcoholism, vandalism, drug addiction, and crime.
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A lot of the kids reject learning because it simply isn’t a priority for their parents, who are not themselves learned. In 2021, only 20.6 percent of the population in Florida aged 25 years and over held a bachelor’s degree or higher.
A lot of those kids rebel against their parents’ strictness and get crazy the moment they slip out from under the parental gaze.
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All I know is…many of my students said, “Mr. Charvet, why am I not normal? Why do I feel this way? Is there something wrong with me?” And they are scared of being ignorant to the WHY of who there are. Many end up committing suicide. So, I studied, read and tried to find out what was best to tell my kids. And to remind them they are loved for who they are; they are unique and without them in this world there would be an abysss for it is not the grandiose things, it is the small things you do on a daily basis with kindness and empathy that really makes the world a better place. You know, since there is such a fight to Make American a Great Christian nation again and God is the Alpha and Omega, uh, yeah, WWJD, right?
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amen
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5 out of 4 people struggle with math.
–New Flor-uh-duh math curriculum
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This isn’t directly related to this post, but it is big news. After years of calls to do so, the American Association of Pediatrics announced that it will finally commission a systematic review of the medical research on gender-related treatment of children.
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I strongly believe that much trouble could be obviated if people were taught to use the term sex for the biological inheritance and gender for the assumed traits, like gait, manner of sitting, dress, speech patterns, accoutrements, roles, activities, and so on, traditionally associated with one sex or the other. Thus it would be clearer that people can experiment with gender without changing their sex, that they can wait to make sex changes until they are old enough to be certain that this is what they want.
Teenagers always think that they are who they will be as adults.
WRONG
They will change ENORMOUSLY between the ages of 16 and 24. They will not be the same people. They will not want the same things.
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But the kids going to FL private schools can collect their voucher dollars and take AP Psych at their publicly funded private school.
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Ironic huh?
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I am not a lawyer and don’t even play one on TV. Someone please explain to me why AP and other organizations like ACLU and NEA do not take Florida to court on First Amendment grounds concerning Academic Freedom at the higher ed level and concerning provable historic content at the K-12 level.
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One group has already sued, but the complaint was dismissed on standing grounds. They’re appealing.
I think local ACLU chapters have sued to invalidate laws like this in other states.
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Standing did not seem to get in the way for SCOTUS to rule in favor of the faux design website. I guess it must be reliant on the direction the sands are shifting…
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I haven’t read the district court opinion or the briefs in the Florida case, so I can’t really offer an explanation. You don’t need an actual injury for Article III standing, but you do need to make some other showings.
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