Archives for category: DeSantis
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Should America Be Like Florida? NO! Says Miami Herald Editorial Board

By dianeravitch
June 1, 2023 //
20

Ron DeSantis wants to make America just like Florida, where the maximum leader (Ron DeSantis) has a docile legislature that lets him decide what everyone else is allowed to do and punishes those bold enough to ignore his orders.

That’s why he is running for President. He thinks the whole nation needs and wants a maximum leader with a reactionary view of behavior and morality.

Florida is where you are free to do whatever Ron DeSantis tells you to do and free to think what he believes. If you disagree, you are no longer free.

The Miami Herald editorial board says DeSantis has turned Florida into a mean state. No, you don’t want to make America Florida.

Florida, under Gov. Ron DeSantis and Republican Legislature, is increasingly hard to recognize. It’s an intolerant and repressive place that bears scant resemblance to the Sunshine State of just a few years ago.

The 2023 legislative session cemented those appalling setbacks. Florida is now a state where government intrusion into the personal lives of Floridians is commonplace. What will it take for citizens to push back on this unprecedented encroachment on their rights? And, more broadly, what if Desantis supporters get what they want, which is to “make America Florida”?

The latest round of laws makes Florida sound more and more dystopian — something voters in the rest of the nation should note if they are considering what a DeSantis presidency could look like. The state has new rules for who can use which bathroom, what pronouns can be used in schools, which books can be taught and when women can get an abortion (almost never.) There are measures to strip union protections from public employees, keep transgender children and their parents from choosing to seek medical treatment, prevent universities from discussing diversity or inclusion and ban talk of gender identity or sexuality in schools all the way through 12th grade.

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Civil Rights, Cruelty, Democracy, DeSantis, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Extremism, Failure, Fascism, Florida, Freedom, Guns, Hoax, Librarians, Libraries, Propaganda, Unions, Vouchers

Book-Banning in Florida Is Contagious in Other Red States

By dianeravitch
May 29, 2023 //
24

The Associated Press published this article about how DeSantis has unleashed a nation-wide zeal for censorship. It appeared in newspapers across the nation.

TALLAHASSEE — As he vies for the Republican presidential nomination, laws pushed by Gov. Ron DeSantis have led to an upswing in banned or restricted books not only in Florida schools but also in an increasing number of other conservative states.

Florida last year became the first in a wave of red states to enact laws making it easier for parents to challenge books in school libraries they deem to be pornographic, deal improperly with racial issues or are in other ways inappropriate for students.

Books ensnared in the Florida regulations include explicit graphic novels about growing up LGBTQ+, a children’s book based on a true story of two male penguins raising a chick in a zoo and “The Bluest Eye,” a novel by Nobel laureate Toni Morrison that includes descriptions of child sexual abuse. Certain books covering racial themes also have been pulled from library shelves, sometimes temporarily, as school administrators try to assess what material is allowed under the new rules.

While efforts to ban books or censor education material have come up sporadically over the years, critics and supporters credit DeSantis with inspiring a new wave of legislation in other conservative states to regulate the books available in schools — and sometimes even in public libraries.

The number of attempts to ban or restrict books across the U.S. last year was the highest in the 20 years the American Library Association has been tracking such efforts.

EveryLibrary, a national political action committee, said it’s tracking at least 121 proposals introduced in state legislatures this year targeting libraries, librarians, educators and access to materials. The group said 39 of those proposals would allow for criminal prosecution.

“He really is blazing a trail,” said Tiffany Justice, the Florida-based co-founder of the conservative group Moms for Liberty, whose members have filed challenges to books in libraries in several states. “What Ron DeSantis does that I think is effective is he uses all the levers of power to make long-term change happen.”

“Other governors,” Justice said, “are paying attention and following suit.

In Arkansas, Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed a law, set to take effect this summer, that could impose criminal penalties on librarians who knowingly provide “harmful” materials to minors. The law also would establish a process for the public to challenge materials and ask they be relocated to a section minors can’t access.

“It’s a perverse world when we’re talking about trying to criminalize librarians,” said Nate Coulter, executive director of the Central Arkansas Library System in Little Rock, which is expected to sue over Arkansas’ law.

In Indiana, school libraries will be required by July 1 to publicly post a list of books they offer and provide a complaint process for community members under a law Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb signed this month. In Texas, a bill creating new standards for banning books from schools that the government considers too explicit has been sent to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk.

In Oklahoma, the state school board has approved new rules that prohibit “pornographic materials and sexualized content” in school libraries and allow parents to submit formal complaints. The rules still must be approved by Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt.

DeSantis insists books aren’t being banned, preferring to call the forced removal of some books “curation choices that are consistent with state standards.”

“There has not been a single book banned in the state of Florida,” DeSantis said Wednesday. He later said, “our mantra in Florida is education, not indoctrination.”

Librarians, free speech advocates and some parents and educators say the push is driven by a small, conservative minority that happens to have outsized clout in Republican primaries like the one DeSantis is now competing in.

“This is all part of his plan to run for president, and he believes his vilification of books and what’s happening in public schools is his path to the presidency,” said Andrew Spar, president of the Florida Education Association, the state’s main teachers union.

Kasey Meehan, who directs the Freedom to Read program at the writers’ organization PEN America, said that, when books are targeted in Florida, they later become the subject of complaints filed by parents in other states.

“It’s something that continues to cause alarm for individuals who are advocating for the freedom to read or for a diversity of knowledge, ideas and books to be available to students across the country,” Meehan said.

There have been challenges to books in schools for decades — “The Bluest Eye” has been targeted in various states for years, long before DeSantis became governor.

But the restrictions accelerated in Florida after DeSantis signed bills last year barring discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third-grade classrooms, a ban that has since expanded through 12th grade. He also created a mechanism for parents to challenge books in school libraries and has targeted how race is taught in Florida schools.

Many teachers and districts complain that the laws’ standards are so vague they don’t know what books might place them in legal jeopardy.

Michael Woods, a special education teacher in Palm Beach, said new rules compelling him to catalog books in his classroom led him to empty a small library he set up where students could choose to read something that interested them. Now those volumes are stored in a box he’s stashed in his closet for fear of getting in trouble.

“That kind of positive connection to reading is no longer there,” he said.

The individual challenges to books might be coming from a fairly narrow segment of the population, according to PEN and the American Library Association, which track requests to pull books. The library association said 40% of all requests challenged 100 or more books at a time.

Raegan Miller of Florida Freedom to Read, a group fighting the book restrictions, said she has talked about education issues with fellow parents of all political persuasions for years, and no one has ever complained about inappropriate material in their children’s schools. She contends the issue has been ginned up by a small group of conservative activists.

“Do you really think we are all just happily dropping our kids off at Marxist indoctrination and pornography?” Miller said. “You only hear this stuff at school board meetings.”

Moms for Liberty, which boasts 285 chapters, has a strong presence at school board meetings in the state and nationwide. It also has successfully backed several candidates for school board.

Categories Censorship, DeSantis, Education Reform, Elections, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Florida, Freedom to Read

DeSantis: “There’s No Book Banning in Florida.” Really?

By dianeravitch
May 29, 2023 //
29

When Ron DeSantis launched his candidacy on Twitter, he scoffed at the notion that schools were banning books in Florida. That alone should disqualify him, based on what we have seen, heard and read about the state’s encouragement of banning books that refer to gays or racism. A complaint by a single parent is sufficient to get a book removed from the school library. Most recently, a parent at an elementary school complained about Amanda Gorman’s poem “The Hill We Climb,” which she read at President Biden’s inauguration. The poem is now available to middle school children, but not to those in the elementary school.

The Miami Herald published this editorial about the phenomenon that DeSantis says is non-existent, a hoax.

Perhaps it’s because of how Amanda Gorman alluded to the Jan. 6 attack in her famous poem, finished the night after rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol: “We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation rather than share it.”

Or maybe she wrote too bluntly about race and the legacy of slavery:

“We, the successors of a country and a time where a skinny Black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president, only to find herself reciting for one.”

Gorman, the youngest inaugural poet in U.S. history, read “The Hill We Climb” at President Joe Biden’s inauguration, watched by about 40 million people. She wrote the poem so “that all young people could see themselves in a historical moment,” she posted on Twitter Tuesday.

But Gorman’s poem is now deemed not age appropriate, one of four library titles Bob Graham Education Center banned, following a parent’s complaint, for elementary school students, the Herald reported. The books are now available only for middle-schoolers at the public school in Miami Lakes, even though some of them were written for younger children.

The school committee that reviewed the material didn’t offer an explanation for its decision. We’re left to wonder: What in the children’s illustrated book “The ABCs of Black History,” written for children ages 5 and up, made it so inappropriate?

Perhaps it was the mention of iconic author James Baldwin’s sexual orientation: “And he was a gay man who believed that when it comes to love, you should ‘go the way your blood beats.” Or the mention of the Little Rock Nine, the “first Black children in all-white schools,” or the Black Panther movement. Or were the colorful drawings of Black female icons like Michelle Obama and Toni Morrison — described as “ queens”— too much?

One thing is clear: Books by Black authors — and about the Black American experience — make up three of the four titles deemed inappropriate for young children at Bob Graham Education Center. The other one, “Cuban Kids,” uses photos to describe the lives of children in Cuba in the early 2000s and how different or similar they are to Americans, according to the author’s homepage. Learning about the lives of their counterparts in a socialist country — including how they got around paper shortages — is sure to turn our kids into communists.

We knew that the movement to “sanitize” school libraries that Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Legislature unleashed would eventually catch up with Miami-Dade. Our melting pot, after all, might not be so different from Escambia County in the Panhandle, whose school board has been sued for removing books about race and LGBTQ topics.

Florida’s laws have emboldened parents and activists like Moms for Liberty to challenge materials dealing with these topics. Most recently, DeSantis signed a bill that empowers one person to file a complaint and ban a book, at least temporarily, while a district reviews it. Parents not satisfied with how a district ruled on the challenge can appeal to the state. That is bound to make schools acquiesce to offended parents.

The result, as Gorman wrote on Twitter after her poem was restricted, is that “most of the forbidden works are by authors who have struggled for generations to get on bookshelves.”

Elementary students were not required to read Gorman’s work or any of the challenged titles. These were options at Bob Graham Education Center’s library. Those options also should be available for the children of all parents, not only those offended by certain content or groups skimming books to find any remote reference to race or LGBTQ issues.

“Love to Langston” was written at a second-grade reading level but no longer is accessible to second-graders at Bob Graham. The illustrated biography of Harlem Renaissancewriter Langston Hughes describes his own elementary school experience, tainted by racism, in the early 1900s:

“In Topeka, Kansas the teacher makes me sit in the corner; in the last row; far away; from the other kids.”

The parent who filed the complaint said “Love to Langston” contained critical race theory, “indirect hate messages,” gender ideology and indoctrination, the Herald reported. It’s unclear how.

It is curious, however, that “indoctrination” and “hate messages” seem to be flagged mostly when when Black authors write about being Black, or when LGBTQ authors write about being queer. The adults must ask themselves why that’s the case before making them inaccessible to children.

Categories Bigotry, Censorship, DeSantis, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, Florida, Freedom to Read, Hoax, Ignorance, Librarians, Libraries, Lies, Literature

What Happened at New College Since the DeSantis Coup

By dianeravitch
May 27, 2023 //
60

Students at New College in Sarasota, Florida, conducted their own, alternative commencement in response to Governor DeSantis’ takeover of the board of the small, progressive public college. He replaced board members who believed in the college’s mission of a self-directed liberal education with new board members who were allied with the DeSantis brand of Christian nationalism.The board replaced the president of the college—an academic—with a rightwing politician who has no qualifications for the position.

In this post, which appears on Tumblr, a New College graduate explained what is happening. The commencement speaker invited by the new regime was Scott Atlas, Trump’s coronavirus advisor (who is not an epidemiologist). The students invited their own speaker, Neil Gaiman, a Bard College professor, whom you will see if you open the link.

everentropy writes:

Hi, I’m a New College alum. I have been following this closely, so I can give you a run-down…Background: New College of Florida is a small liberal arts college in Sarasota. It has around 800 students, and probably less next year. It does not have grades, it instead has narrative evaluations. There are no required classes beyond what is legally required for Common Core. As an Honors College, everyone is required to do an undergraduate thesis and defend it in front of a Baccalaureate Committee. I studied Environmental Science and I was able to create my own major (known as an Area of Concentration). I even designed an Independent Study Project that went in-depth on cholera.

As for what is happening now, the simple answer is that Governor DeSantis appointed a bunch of conservatives to the Board of Trustees (or BoT). One of these is Chris Rufo, the guy behind the CRT scare. They have been trying to systematically tear down the college. This has included things like firing the president and trying to change the school’s curriculum and entrance requirements, with a conservative evangelical Christian angle.

For a more in-depth answer, here is a list of things they have done or are currently planning on doing. (i had it under a readmore but it looks like that fucks up the formatting) They fired the previous president, even though she was ACTUALLY solving many of the issues including enrollment and bringing in donors. By every measure she was doing a great job. Of course, you can’t hire DeSantis’s cronies if someone else is in the position! They fired a queer librarian a week before finals. They denied five professors tenure, including two from the “woke” specialization of… organic chemistry. They are currently trying to change the school mascot. It is, according to the student government constitution { }, AKA the null set. They want a mascot to be more marketable, not because students are asking for it. Most insultingly, they sent out a survey asking for students’ “opinions” and one of the options they had was the Conquistadores. It’s 2023, it’s hilariously out of touch. They removed the “DEI Department”. Which didn’t exist. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion was part of the admissions and outreach department. New College isn’t even big enough to have staff dedicated to that. They couldn’t even fire anyone so they made a stupid show of “eliminating it” that did nothing. They are trying to use the CLT, a Christian-based entrance exam, instead of the SAT. (Several alums have started adding an I after the CL.) Also, the formerly student-run cafe is now being run by a local business that has put (misspelled) bible verses on the cups. They want to have a “classics” education, and require students to take specific courses. New College already teaches from “the greats” for many classes, but they don’t actually know what the New College curriculum is. It will also almost certainly be from a Christian, western perspective, rather than the broader one that students currently get. New College teaches you HOW to think, it doesn’t tell you to think a specific way.

They are trying to put in both a baseball and basketball team. That doesn’t sound that bad on the surface but New College has barely enough students for ONE team, and that would have to be co-ed. It’s a school of around 800 students. (Probably less next year). There’s no way they qualify for competitive sports. It’s a grift meant to give positions to friends of the BoT through cronyism. I genuinely feel sorry for any student transferring because they were promised a sports career.

Also, New College doesn’t have sports and is proud of that fact. It’s an attempt to ruin our culture by attracting students that didn’t come here solely for learning. We even have a motto that our football team is “undefeated” (because we don’t have one). They also want to make this a pipeline for students from Inspiration Academy specifically and are trying to make it easier to enter. Finally, the cherry on top of the cake, and the reason that Mr. Gaiman gave this speech in the first place, is that they asked Scott Atlas to be speaker for commencement. He was one of the members of former President Trump’s COVID taskforce and actively downplayed the threat of COVID. His speech was not about how students have a bright future and how they will do great things. No, it was full of self-congratulations, name-dropping, and lies about COVID. If I hadn’t known what it was I would never guessed that it was a commencement speech. The only thing even remotely about the students was about standing up for your beliefs, even when people tell you you’re wrong. The people watching literally turned their backs on him and started chanting “Wrap it up!” which was pretty funny honestly. I enjoyed that. I’m pretty sure most people who attended did so to protest him. Also, the current president of the college didn’t make a speech or hand out diplomas, probably because he knew how disliked he is. Make no mistake, this is meant to be a test case. And when they are done here they will move on to other colleges, and conservatives will bring this to other states as well. That’s why resisting is so important. I will say a bright spot in all of this is the outpouring of support we have received. Thank you everyone who has reblogged this with a message of support. We appreciate it. Please feel free to message me if you have any questions and I’ll do my best to answer them.

#save new college#savenewcollege#new college of florida#chris rufo#scott atlas#ron desantis#wrap it up!#long post#ask to tag#I’m pretty sure I’m missing things#but yeah that’s most of it#it’s been EXHAUSTING#it’s only been a few months but it feels longer

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Courage, Creativity, DeSantis, Disruption, Extremism, Florida

NAACP and Others Issue Travel Advisory: Avoid Florida! Bigots Run the State!

By dianeravitch
May 24, 2023 //
19

NPR reported on a warning issued by the nation’s oldest civil rights organization, the NAACP. Travelers should avoid Florida, where there is a pervasive air of bigotry and easy access to guns. The warning nearly coincided with Ron DeSantis’ declaration of his campaign, on a media platform with billionaire Elon Musk. DeSantis will tout his record of stern opposition to migrants, gays, drag queens, transgender people, Black history, and his unwavering support for censorship and guns.

ORLANDO, Fla. — The NAACP over the weekend issued a travel advisory for Florida, joining two other civil rights groups in warning potential tourists that recent laws and policies championed by Gov. Ron DeSantis and Florida lawmakers are “openly hostile toward African Americans, people of color and LGBTQ+ individuals.”

The NAACP, long an advocate for Black Americans, joined the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), a Latino civil rights organization, and Equality Florida, a gay rights advocacy group, in issuing travel advisories for the Sunshine State, where tourism is one of the state’s largest job sectors.

The warning approved Saturday by the NAACP’s board of directors tells tourists that, before traveling to Florida, they should understand the state of Florida “devalues and marginalizes the contributions of, and the challenges faced by African Americans and other communities of color.”

Critics say Florida aims to rewrite history by rejecting African American studies

An email was sent Sunday morning to DeSantis’ office seeking comment. The Republican governor is expected to announce a run for the GOP presidential nomination this week.

Florida is one of the most popular states in the U.S. for tourists, and tourism is one of its biggest industries. More than 137.5 million tourists visited Florida last year, marking a return to pre-pandemic levels, according to Visit Florida, the state’s tourism promotion agency. Tourism supports 1.6 million full-time and part-time jobs, and visitors spent $98.8 billion in Florida in 2019, the last year figures are available.

DeSantis’s efforts to exclude migrants may hurt Florida more than the boycott. Will the tourism industry have the staff it needs for hotels and restaurants? Will the agricultural industry have enough laborers to pick crops?

DeSantis’s war on teaching accurate, factual history about American history, his demands for book banning, and his support for vouchers for every student in the state, even those already in private schools, degrades education and intelligence in Florida.

DeSantis is running on a platform of hate, bigotry, and disunity. Let’s see how that plays.

Categories Bigotry, Censorship, Cruelty, Curriculum, DeSantis, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Florida, Freedom of Speech, Freedom to Read, Religion, Republicans, Vouchers

Scott Maxwell: Purging Knowledge in Florida

By dianeravitch
May 20, 2023 //
36

The mainstream media has given ample coverage to the likelihood that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is likely to announce his candidacy for the Republican nomination for president in the next week. The stories about him treat him as a normal elected officials. They do not reference his multiple efforts to censor ideas and people he doesn’t like; to ban teaching ideas he doesn’t like; to ban textbooks that include ideas he disagrees with; to persecute drag queens and gay people. The American people need to know who he is. DeSantis’ regime of censorship is a pathetic attempt by pasty-faced cowards to dumb down the students of Florida. They can’t succeed because everyone has access to the Internet and television, where they will learn about the lies the state is teaching them.

Scott Maxwell is a regular columnist for the Orlando Sentinel. He is fearless. In this post, he writes about Governor Ron DeSantis’ purge of knowledge he doesn’t like.

The headlines are as abundant as they are dystopian:

“Florida rejects, amends many social studies textbooks”

“An Entire Florida School District Has Banned a Kids’ Book on Segregation”

“Florida bans more than 40% of math books after review”

“350+ Books Banned in Florida School Districts Since Last July”

A knowledge purge is underway in Florida. The targets: History lessons that politicians want hidden. Perspectives that make parents uncomfortable. Truths that ideologues find inconvenient.

Basically, we have people who want to control the narrative. And they think it’s easier to do that if kids don’t know all the facts.

Now, it’s hard to get your hands around both the scope and the specifics of this purge, because education officials are censoring so much and revealing so little.

In the latest salvo, Gov. Ron DeSantis’ education department rejected 35 different social studies books — more than a third of all they reviewed.
Florida rejects some social studies books, forces ‘Take a Knee’ out of one

But to justify their actions, they released snippets from only six of the books they shunned or ordered altered. So you don’t have much to go on.
But let’s look at one of those six examples. It’s from an elementary school textbook that teaches children about patriotism.

DeSantis staffers approved passages that instructed students to learn the Pledge of Allegiance and encouraged parents to stress the significance of the national anthem. But they did not want kids hearing why they might see some Americans, especially athletes on TV, take a knee during the anthem.

Specifically, the Florida Department of Education ordered the textbook to remove a section that suggested parents — not teachers, mind you — use that lesson on patriotic traditions “as an opportunity to talk about why some citizens are choosing to ‘Take a Knee’ to protest police brutality and racism.” DeSantis staffers ordered that suggestion stricken.

A popular talking point for people who dislike athletes taking a knee is to describe them as “anti-American,” “anti-cop” or “unpatriotic.” And it’s easier to peddle that narrative if students don’t hear why the players themselves say they’re doing what they are.

Personally, I think there’s valid debate over taking a knee. I can see why some players would. I can see why many people would dislike them doing so. It’s not really that hard to understand the divide — if you listen to what people on both sides are saying.
But the new Florida model of education doesn’t want to share all sides. The censors say kids aren’t ready for these discussions. Really, though, it’s the adults who are scared their kids might hear a different perspective. They’re the snowflakes.

The DeSantis censors also axed a section about Black Lives Matter from a middle school textbook that presented both pro and con perspectives on the social movement. The passage described the killing of George Floyd, explained that social media gave rise to civic activism and then gave a brief explanation of why some people supported Black Lives Matter and an even lengthier description of why others opposed it.DeSantis’ education staffers ordered the entire section removed.

At least one of the passages DeSantis staffers removed looks justifiably flagged. It’s a section from a middle-school book that attempts to teach students what a socialist form of government is.
The first part does a fine job explaining that, in a socialist society, the government controls much of the means of production, but then says: “It keeps things nice and even and without unnecessary waste.” Um, what? That seems more like a pom-pom for socialism — and a pretty skewed one at that — than a civics lesson. Yank it out.

But here’s the problem: DeSantis staffers shared a reworked version of the textbook that met their approval. It removed the word “socialism” altogether, replacing it with “planned economies.”
I’m no fan of socialism, but I’d sure like students to have a correct understanding of what it is. Why? Because the vast majority of adults who scream about socialism absolutely do not. They somehow believe anything government-funded is “socialism” … and then turn into Cletus the Slack-jawed Yokel when you ask them if that means Medicare and highways are socialist as well.

I’d love to see students better informed than these adults. But that seems to be the last thing the grown-ups want.

Last year, before state officials were rejecting social studies textbooks, they were flagging math books for being allegedly too woke. A handful of people apparently believed liberal boogeymen had infiltrated the nation’s algebra-instructional complex. And the handful got their way.

Some of this censorship is silly, political theater. Some is a serious effort to indoctrinate.

One publisher, Penguin Randomhouse, sued the Escambia County school district last week over its book-banning. Other publishers agree to comply with whatever censorship orders they’re given as they’re more interested in selling textbooks than standing on any sort of educational principles.

Then there are all the school library books being banned in historic numbers, thanks to the Republican-led Legislature’s new book-banning bill — books about everything from the civil rights movement to nontraditional families.

School book challenges, already on rise, could escalate in Florida

The Lake County school district pulled a picture book about the true story of two male penguins in Central Park Zoo who raised a chick after the zookeeper gave them an egg. A Panhandle district removed a book about school segregation in the 1950s with the New Republic reporting the district concluded the subject matter was “difficult for elementary students to comprehend.”

I don’t think kids are the problem here. In fact, the local banning crusades are sometimes led by just one or two adults who not only want to shelter their own kids from ideas they find scary but want to keep books away from everyone else’s kids at school as well.

I thought of all this book-banning and history-censoring while attending a recent session on the rise of antisemitism at the Holocaust Memorial Resource and Education Center of Florida. One panelist said the best way to combat hatred, intolerance and ignorance is to ensure children hear unvarnished truths. He described it as “The criticality of giving truth to our kids.”

The leader of a Holocaust Center in South Florida made a similar point recently stressing: “The Holocaust, it didn’t start with guns and death camps. It started with words.”

Well, words are precisely what Florida is trying to ban, censor and distort. In unprecedented fashion.

smaxwell@orlandosentinel.com

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Censorship, Character, Cruelty, Curriculum, Democracy, DeSantis, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Florida, Republicans

Bob Shepherd: Are Trump and His Allies Fascists?

By dianeravitch
May 19, 2023 //
101

Bob Shepherd is a polymath and a daily reader of the blog. He has been involved in every aspect of educational publishing, and most recently, he was a teacher in Florida. He graciously offered to help me with two of my books—The Language Police and Slaying Goliath—by carefully editing them before they were turned in to the publisher. And we have never met!

He wrote on his own blog:

A few years back, a friend, someone whom I respect, challenged me on Facebook, saying that Trump might be a lot of things, but he wasn’t an actual Fascist. Well, I beg to differ. If it steps like a goose, . . .

Here are a few of the clear signs that, yes, Fascist is precisely the term to describe Trump, his supporters, and those who wish to assume the orange mantle:

Alliance with other Fascists/Authoritarians. D.T. allied himself with violent, extremist authoritarian nationalists around the globe—with, of course, his handler, Vladimir Putin, but also with Rodrigo Duterte, Narendra Modi, Jair Bolsonaro, Recep Erdoğan, Viktor Orbán and even, shockingly and weirdly, with Kim Jong-un. Hitler allied himself with extremist authoritarian nationalists around the globe—Mussolini of Italy, Hirohito of Japan, Tsar Boris III of Bulgaria, Horthy of Hungary, Antonescu of Romania, Tiso of Slovakia, and Pavelić‘of Croatia (see the Tripartite Pact signed in September of 1940 and joined later by other members of the Axis Powers).

Use of Violent Citizens’ Militias. D.T. supported and employed on numerous occasions armed, right-wing citizens’ militias, notably

a) at the March on Charlottesville by neo-Nazis who chanted “Jews will not replace us” and murdered an antifascist protestor;
b) when a group of these self-appointed militiamen invaded the Michigan Capitol and Legislature, armed, and plotted to kidnap and murder Michigan’s governor; AND
c) when several groups of these, including the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, broke into and ransacked the U.S. Capital, beat police officers, caused injuries that led to deaths, called for hanging the Vice President, and tried to overthrow the incoming government of the United States by preventing its certification.

Trump approved of all these actions by Citizens’ Militias, saying in the first instance that there were “Good people on both sides”—the Nazis and those opposing them–and in the latter instances that these were “patriots.” And, of course, he planned and stoked the last–the January 6th insurrection. In addition, he called on his Attorney General, Secretary of Defense, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs to violate the Posse Comitatus Act and send federal troops to attack BLM protestors, which Barr sort of went along with his little green men (Esper and Milley, to their eternal credit, declined). Hitler, of course, infamously used citizens’ militias, the Sturmabteilung (the SA, or brownshirts), to provide protection at rallies, to attack enemies, and, with the SS, to carry out the infamous attacks on Jews during Kristallnacht. When asked to denounce white supremacy in a debate, Trump responded by saying, “Proud Boys—stand back and stand by.”

Monumentalism. D.T. loved monuments and monumental architecture and got a lot of political mileage out of riling up supporters of continuing to have on display in the public sphere commemorative statues of genocidal maniacs and enemies of the United States (Columbus; slave-owning men who led forces of insurrection during the Civil War). He organized a Republican Convention that was replete with monumental architecture and iconography. To do this, he violated the law by using the White House and its grounds as a political campaign/convention set. He called for absurdly expensive military parades of the kinds one sees in Communist China, North Korea. and Putin’s Russia. Trump called for building a massive “patriotic” sculpture garden. He held monumentalist nationalist events like the 4th of July military airshow at Mount Rushmore. Hitler, of course, employed Albert Speer to build monumentalist fascist architecture and devoted a great deal of his time to this.

The Cult of Personality. D.T. constantly referred to himself as “the best” or “the greatest” this or that and plastered his name on everything, from massive amounts of merch (Trump steaks, Trump straws, Trump flags) to buildings to letters accompanying Covid relief checks. He turned every discussion of every issue into one about himself and how great he is, even events that were supposed to be to honor Gold Star families or present information about how not to die from a virulent pandemic. Like a mob boss or any other Fascist leader, he required loyalty oaths and fired people who didn’t make them. At every cabinet meeting, cabinet members were expected to preface their remarks with long exhortations about the greatness of Trump (for an abject lesson in human self-abasement, go listen to a recording of one of these delivered by Mike Pence, to whom, of course, Trump showed no corresponding loyalty). He literally described himself as “the only” person who could solve the country’s problems. Clearly, Trump suffers from malignant narcissistic personality disorder. Conjure in your mind, if you have the stomach for it, a typical Trump rally. Trump created a cult of personality, just as all Fascist strongmen have done—Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Mao, Pinochet, the Kim Dynasty of North Korea, etc. The difference, of course, is that Trump was merely a WANNABE Fascist strongman.

The Myth of the Return to Racial and National Greatness. D.T. constantly referred to a mythical Golden Age to which he would return the country and even made this his official slogan (“Make America Great Again,” or MAGA). This was, of course, precisely what Hitler did, calling for a return to a time of Aryan and German greatness–the major theme of his propaganda and writing and speeches.

The Racial Supremacy Myth/Use of Racism to Mobilize the Masses. D.T. constantly issued racist dog-whistles, from his ad attacking the innocent members of the Central Park Five to his Obama birtherism to his calling asylum seekers “caravans” and “hordes” of “rapists and murders” to his references to “s—thole countries” to his “Good people on both sides” to his planning of rallies at sites of racist violence (near the Alamo, Tulsa, etc.) to his suggestions that China purposefully engineered and released SARS-COV-2, which Trump variously referred to, in his racist way, as the “China flu,” the “Wuhan flu,” and so on. And, of course, Trump built his whole campaign, initially, on the racist idea that America was being taken over by immigrants and that in order to “have a country,” we would need to keep out the brown-skinned hordes. In fact, this is why Jeff Sessions, Steve Bannon, and Stephen Miller chose Trump to run in 2015 to begin with. See the Frontline documentary about this, Zero Tolerance (2019). Trump called for the Border Patrol to SHOOT innocent asylum seekers and screamed at his Secretary of Homeland Security for saying that she couldn’t do that. Hitler baked anti-Semitism into the Nazi ideology. Both leaders ran concentration camps targeting members of particular ethnic groups. Both committed horrific Crimes against Humanity (Hitler’s genocides; Trump’s kidnapping of immigrant children and separation of these from their parents).

Scapegoating and Call for the Elimination of Enemies Within. D.T. constantly referred and continues to refer to “enemies within” that have to be eliminated “or you’re not going to have a country anymore.” These he refers to as Socialists, the “Radical Left,” “Antifa,’ and so on. One of Trump’s favorite and most often used slurs is Enemy of the People, a phrase that goes all the way back to Roman times and was famously the title of a great play by Ibsen. Calling for the elimination of enemies within is, of course, exactly what Hitler did, blaming Germany’s troubles, such as its loss of World War I and its hyperinflation on “enemies within”—Jews and Socialists and Communists—who had “stabbed the country in the back.” But it was, of course, the extreme left-wing Fascist leaders in Russia and East Germany, during the Stalin Era, who made Enemy of the People a standard catchphrase in the 20th Century, but Trump is too ignorant to know this, to know that every time he calls Biden or Fauci or whomever an “Enemy of the People,” he is sounding just like the murderous Joseph Stalin. (And yes, you can have Fascists who come to it from the left.) And even if Trump did know this, it probably wouldn’t bother him in the least bit. Trump has expressly said that he was unhappy with “his” generals because they didn’t show him the deference that Hitler’s generals showed to Hitler. Of course, Trump doesn’t know, because he is profoundly ignorant, a bear of very little brain, that a number of those very generals tried to assassinate Hitler several times. LOL. Be careful what you wish for, Donnie!

The Fascist Rally. D.T.’s main method of communication with his base was the large-scale rally—precisely the sort of method used by Hitler, with Goebbels and Speer as organizers and Leni Riefenstahl to film these.

Indoctrination of the Young. Trump called for the creation of an overtly exceptionalist, nationalist curriculum. Hitler did the same (see, for example, the Nazi textbook on Aryan supremacy, Rasse und Seele) and also created his Hitler Youth, his League of German Girls, and his Lebensborn Program.

The National Supremacy Myth. Trump’s American Exceptionalism, Hitler’s Übermenschen and Deutschland über alles. Same diseased thought.

Eugenics and Genetic Determinism. D.T. constantly referred to his “good genes” and what he called his “racehorse theory” of what constituted a fine woman–one who was properly bred. Despite the fact of his almost total scientific ignorance, he was and is committed to a myths of Eugenics and genetic determinism–one of the central myths, of course, of Nazi ideology. And this myth, of course, supports the racial and national superiority myths.

The Erasure of the Concept of a Nation of Laws and Totalitarian Insistence That His Will Is the Law. Trump insisted, “I have an Article 2 that says I can do anything I like as President.” He seems to think that he could just magically wave his hand and declassify documents and that, at any rate, rules about preservation and secrecy didn’t apply to him because NO RULES apply to him. Trump treated agencies and departments of the government as HIS, insisting, for example, that “His” generals and “His” DOJ and “His” everything else be absolutely subservient, and he fired or attempted to fire anyone who disagreed with him about anything. Barr went along with basically turning the DOJ into Trump’s private law firm. Hitler, of course, had the Enabling Act, making his will and the law identical. This the Fascists like Trump and Hitler share with Absolute Monarchists, the idea that L’état, c’est moi. Belief in the absolute authority of the Glorious Leader (Trump thought his image should be carved onto Mount Rushmore) is what puts the “total” in Totalitarianism.

The Portrayal of Himself as the Ultra-Masculine Leader, the Archetype of the Masculine, the Strongman. Trump loves to talk about how tough he is and constantly made threats via Tweet, yelled at staff, tore up briefs, and actually threw things when he got mad. And he constantly degraded women, speaking of grabbing them by the genitals, bragging about being able to get away with sexual assault, yelling at his female Secretary of Homeland Security and calling her “Honey,” making disgusting remarks about female celebrities and reporters. He actually ran a freaking old school beauty pageant. He bragged about walking in on the women while they were dressing because as owner, he could get away with it. He was a big pal of Jeffrey Epstein’s. Of course, Trump didn’t have the physique to portray himself as a male sex symbol, so he tweeted out pictures of his face Photoshopped onto the body of fictional boxer Rocky Balboa and actually sold this image on his website. Over twenty-five women have accused him of sexual assault. He paid off a porn star and a Playboy bunny to keep quiet about affairs with him. And in these respects, Trump was in the mold of other Fascist leaders who promulgated hyper-masculinized images of themselves (along with a big dose of hyper-sexism)–think Mussolini and Pinochet and Berlusconi and of Hitler’s military garb and Putin’s shirtless, horseback photoshoots.

One could go on and on. In Trump one had and has ALMOST the complete Fascist package. The one element that was missing was the competence to pull it off. Trump is far too ignorant and stupid to have effected a Fascist revolution in America. The next guy will have all Trump’s Fascist tendencies but be smarter and more knowledgeable.

P.S.: It is extraordinarily important to call Fascism out when it rears its monstrous head, to call it what it is. Why? Because silence is complicity. It’s letting it happen again. It’s making the same mistake that Germans made back in 1932-33, expecting that it’s not going to be all that bad. That experience is behind us all now. We are supposed to know better. It CAN get that bad, that quickly. Been there, done that. In the middle of the last century, we fought a war to end this shit. Here we are seeing it again, right here, on our soil. Who would have imagined that we would have slid so far backward? These must be more than just words: Never again.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Corruption, Dark Money, Democracy, DeSantis, Disruption, Elections, Extremism, Fascism, Propaganda, Racism, Shame

Editorial: In Florida, It’s Best to Be Woke

By dianeravitch
May 19, 2023 //
31

The editorial boards of the Orlando Sentinel and the South Florida Sun Sentinel published this commentary on Governor DeSantis’ campaign to demonize being “woke.” What does it mean to be woke? It means being aware of systemic injustice. Did systemic injustices occur in the past? Yes. Do they occur now? Yes. Should we banish teaching or learning about systemic injustices, as DeSantis demands? No. That would mean teaching lies. Can we blame teachers or schools for the drop in scores on NAEP (the National Assessment of Educational Progress) when politicians like DeSantis require teachers to teach their students lies?

The editorial says it’s good to be woke:

Have you noticed? Gov. Ron DeSantis doesn’t smile enough. His brand is anger, especially at anything he can ridicule as “woke.”

Disney is “woke.” Diversity is “woke.” His obsession to cleanse Florida classrooms of discussions of racism was the “Stop W.O.K.E. Act.”

He took over New College of Florida because it was “woke.” He suspended Tampa State Attorney Andrew Warren because his policies were “woke.”
Florida “is where woke goes to die,” he says. This four-letter word has lost much of its punch, purely from overuse.

But it really doesn’t matter whether people have any idea of what “woke” means — just that it sounds bad.

But what does it mean, really?

‘Systemic injustices’

As good an answer as any came from DeSantis’ general counsel, under questioning from Warren’s attorney in federal court.

“The belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them,” lawyer Ryan Newman replied, adding that DeSantis doesn’t share that belief.

He doesn’t? No society is without injustices. To pretend that ours is is ludicrous.

The term “woke” originated in Black culture almost a century ago. According to the Legal Defense Fund, it became an “in-group signal urging Black people to be aware of the systems that harm and otherwise put us at a disadvantage.”

Those are precisely the systems that DeSantis pretends don’t exist, and that he doesn’t want Florida schoolchildren and college students to learn anything about. His hijacking of the word “woke” is ironic, to say the least.

Obnoxious objectives

His objectives, like that of copycat Republican politicians, are threefold. One is to cater to bigoted and resentful white voters. Donald J. Trump taught them the effectiveness of that. No. 2: Breed a generation of future voters who will have learned nothing about racism’s history or continuing consequences.

The third objective, not quite so transparent but equally pernicious, is to desensitize the nation’s courts to systemic economic and political injustices, many of which afflict poor white people just as much as Black people. The Florida Supreme Court bought into this when it purged diversity guidelines from the Florida Bar’s continuing education criteria.

There hasn’t been such a cynical disinformation campaign since the Daughters of the Confederacy set out more than a century ago to reinvent the Civil War and Reconstruction. In that distorted looking glass, slavery had nothing to do with the war; it was the South fighting for freedom and the North fighting against it. That’s how children were to be taught.

Writing in The New York Times, Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. described how the Daughters suppressed textbooks to the extent of rejecting any that described slaveholders as cruel. Slavery, wrote the Daughters’ historian, “was an education that taught the negro self-control, obedience and perseverance.”

“Undertaken by apologists for the former Confederacy with an energy and alacrity that was astonishing in its vehemence and reach, in an era defined by print culture, politicians and amateur historians joined forces to police the historical profession,” Gates wrote. “The so-called Lost Cause movement was, in effect, a take-no-prisoners social media war.”

The racism didn’t go away when the South lost the war and slaves were freed. It fostered sharecropping — slavery by another means. It rationalized Jim Crow laws, lynchings, inferior schools and a denial of the right to vote that persisted until 1965. It led to federal housing policies that confined Black people to urban ghettos. It was evident when Social Security initially excluded domestic and farm workers on the fiction that it would be too difficult to collect the taxes.

It remains glaring today in the statistic that Black Americans, who account for 13% of the population, are 27% of the people shot and killed by police. It was evident when the Tennessee House of Representatives expelled two Black members over a gun violence protest in their chamber, but not the Caucasian legislator who protested with them. It is apparent in the increasing re-segregation of public schools; profound racial disparities in income, health and mortality; and the persistence of fair housing and fair employment violations.

Exposure is essential

The remedy for injustice begins with exposure. It is essential. To conceal it is to be complicit in the injustice.

To teach American history through rose-colored glasses, as DeSantis intends, is to ignore the heroism and sacrifices that every generation has made toward fulfilling the belief that “all men are created equal.” That so many Americans have risen so often to that challenge speaks well of our nation, not poorly.

A federal judge has temporarily blocked one of DeSantis’ schemes — the law allowing educators and private businesses to be sued for making students and employees feel guilty about racism — but the destruction of the schools and universities goes on.

It’s up to the voters whether that continues. It’s better to be “woke” than silent any day.


The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board includes Editor-in-Chief Julie , Opinion Editor Krys Fluker and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, and Anderson. Send letters to insight@orlandosentinel.com.


© 2023 Orlando Sentinel

Categories Academic Freedom, Bigotry, Censorship, Civil Rights, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, DeSantis, Education Industry, Equity, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Florida, Gender, History, Hoax, Lies, Privatization, Propaganda, Racism, Religion, Shame

Gavin Newsom Fires Back at DeSantis Insult

By dianeravitch
May 17, 2023 //
36

When Ron DeSantis held a press conference to celebrate his latest attacks on academic freedom, he sneeringly said, “If you want to study gender ideology, go to Berkeley,” because universities in Florida will focus on workforce preparation (which he thinks is a “classical education,” a sure sign that he never had one).

California Governor Gavin Newsom enjoys trading punches with DeSantis, and he sent out this reply:

Diane –

Ron DeSantis says if people want to study “niche subjects” they should go to Berkeley, but down in Florida they are going to focus on “the basics.”

His supporters chuckled. They thought it was a sick burn.

But some education is in order:

Six of the top ten public universities are located in California and the most popular majors at UC Berkeley are Cellular Biology, Computer Science, and Quantitative Economics.

That’s Math, Science and Technology.

It also probably explains why California outperforms Florida in all of those categories while having ten times the number of biotech companies as Florida and three times as many tech jobs as Florida.

But at least DeSantis got some laughs for his flailing presidential campaign…

Team Newsom

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, California, DeSantis, Florida, Higher Education, Ignorance, Lies

DeSantis Wants to Fire Superintendent Who Disagreed with Him

By dianeravitch
May 17, 2023 //
27

Florida is the state where freedom goes to die.

Since Governor Ron DeSantis was re-elected, he has been using the powers of his office to punish anyone who dares to criticize him. He fired an elected state prosecutor. He has harassed Disney, the state’s largest employer, for daring to oppose his “Don’t Say Gay” law. He has taken over the state’s only progressive college and handed it over to far-right zealots. He has banned the teaching of honest history, most especially Black history. Under his control, the state Department of Education censors textbooks that include facts he doesn’t like. Under his direction, the state board of education is whittling away the tenure and academic freedom of professors. He is replacing competent college presidents of public colleges and universities with his cronies. During the height of the pandemic, he banned any mandates for masks or vaccines. Now he is going after the elected superintendent of Leon County schools.

We have never before seen, at least in our lifetimes, a state attempt to enact fascism, day by day, week by week. I refuse to accept DeSantis’ dictatorial ways as normal. They are not normal. He personally gerrymandered the state, eliminating three of four Black members of Congress. The list of his anti-democratic actions should alarm everyone. He should turn all of us anti-fascist. The “Greatest Generation” fought a world war to defeat fascism. We must not ignore what is happening or normalize it, as the media does when they discuss DeSantis’ presidential aspirations. All I can do is shine a light. It’s up to the voters in Florida and in the GOP primaries to reject this wannabe Mussolini.

Florida officials are threatening to revoke the teaching license of a school superintendent who criticized Gov. Ron DeSantis, accusing the educator of violating several statutes and DeSantis directives and allowing his “personal political views” to guide his leadership.

Such a revocation by the state Department of Education could allow DeSantis to remove Leon County Superintendent Rocky Hanna from his elected office. The Republican governor did that last year to an elected Democratic prosecutor in the Tampa Bay area who disagreed with his positions limiting abortion and medical care for transgender teens and indicated he might not enforce new laws in those areas.

Disney also sued DeSantis this week, saying he targeted its Orlando theme parks for retribution after it criticized the governor’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law that then banned the discussion of sexuality and gender in early grades, but has since been expanded.

Hanna has publicly opposed that law, once defied the governor’s order that barred any mandate that students wear masks during the COVID-19 pandemic, and criticized a DeSantis-backed bill that recently passed that will pay for students to attend private school. The Leon County district, with about 30,000 students, covers Tallahassee, the state capital, and its suburbs.

“It’s a sad day for democracy in Florida, and the First Amendment right to freedom of speech, when a state agency with unlimited power and resources, can target a local elected official in such a biased fashion,” Hanna said in a statement sent to The Associated Press and other media Thursday. A Democrat then running as an independent, Hanna was elected to a second four-year term in 2020 with 60% of the vote. He plans to run for reelection next year and does not need a teacher’s license to hold the job.

“This investigation has nothing to do with these spurious allegations, but rather everything to do with attempting to silence myself and anyone else who speaks up for teachers and our public schools in a way that does not fit the political narrative of those in power,” Hanna said.

He said the investigation was spurred by a single complaint from a leader of the local chapter of Moms for Liberty, a conservative education group, requesting his removal.

Categories Academic Freedom, Bigotry, Censorship, Democracy, DeSantis, Elections, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Florida, Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Freedom to Read
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »