Scary stuff happening in Florida schools
DeSantis has the nerve to accuse these people of “grooming” and “indoctrination:”
Adam Tritt, a high school English teacher in Palm Bay, Florida, was shocked when his school’s librarian – eager to comply with Florida’s new law restricting “inappropriate” books in schools – removed one-third of the books on his classroom shelves, including a collection of Emily Dickinson’s poetry that was not on her list of approved books.
Vivian Taylor, a seventh-grade teacher in Miami, says she was told to hardly discuss Emmett Till – the 14-year-old victim of one of the US’s most notorious lynchings – in her civics classes because under Florida’s year-old “stop woke” law, “people say you’re not supposed to talk about that because it will make children uncomfortable”.
Carol Cleaver, a middle-school science teacher in Pensacola, says that when LGBTQ+ students who are feeling hopeless or depressed approach her to discuss their emotional troubles, she, different from before, often balks at telling them about a crisis support hotline for young LGBTQ+ people. She fears that if she mentions it, she will get in trouble under the Parental Rights in Education bill (known as the “don’t say gay” law) backed by Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis.
As the summer holidays approach, Florida teachers are feeling anxious, confused and beaten down by new laws, championed by DeSantis, that limit how issues of race can be taught, what teachers can say about sex, especially about homosexuality, and what books are permitted in schools. In promoting this legislation, DeSantis angered many teachers when he denounced “indoctrination in our schools” and let his press secretary accuse teachers of “grooming” students.
In interviews with the Guardian, Florida teachers said they’re feeling more disrespected, unappreciated and under attack than ever before, worried that they’ll be fired or otherwise punished if they run afoul of the controversial – and often vague – new laws. As a result of these laws and their emboldening parents to challenge and even castigate teachers, many Florida teachers say they’re considering either giving up teaching or finding a teaching job in another state – all when Florida, which ranks 48th among states in teacher pay according to a recent study, is already suffering from a shortage of 5,300 teachers. Florida teachers complain that DeSantis – who is expected to announce plans to run for the Republican presidential nomination – has targeted them as part of a culture war aimed at winning over GOP voters.
“All this is just one more rock on the scale toward leaving,” said Arian Dineen, a middle school teacher in Stuart, 100 miles north of Miami. “I have many friends and colleagues who are genuinely afraid.” Afraid, for instance, of being accused of teaching critical race theory, an esoteric theory about race, rarely taught outside universities, that a DeSantis-backed law bars schools from teaching.
“There are many more important things for the governor to be worrying about,” Dineen added. “We have a housing affordability crisis, a health insurance crisis, a housing insurance crisis. It’s absurd for the governor and legislature to be worried about teachers indoctrinating students on things we don’t even discuss in class.”
In signing the “stop woke” bill, DeSantis said: “No one should be instructed to feel … shamed because of their race. In Florida, we will not let the far-left woke agenda take over our schools.” When DeSantis signed the “don’t say gay” bill, he said parents “should be protected from schools using classroom instruction to sexualize their kids as young as five years old”.
DeSantis’s office did not respond to questions from the Guardian about Florida teachers’ complaints about the new laws.
Latonya Starks, a fourth-grade teacher in Fort Myers, said there was one big reason keeping her from taking a teaching job in another state: she is waiting for her 17-year-old son to finish high school.
“We’ve seen this chipping away at how people view us as educators,” Starks said. “There’s this supposed woke agenda, and we’re supposedly teaching students to hate themselves because they’re white. All I know is that myself and my colleagues, we present the facts, present true and honest history, but many people are believing what they’re hearing from DeSantis and anyone in his wheelhouse. That’s been really hard. You feel like people are looking at you like you’re doing something not so nice to their kids.”
Starks said that ever since DeSantis signed the Parental Rights in Education bill 14 months ago, she’s been anxious and unsure about what to do when pre-teen girls tell her they are having their first menstrual period without fully understanding what was happening to them. Starks fears getting into trouble under the new law, which prohibits teachers from saying anything about sex that is not “age-appropriate”.
“Before I would have explained everything and said, ‘It’s OK, sweetheart. I’ll get you to the clinic,’” Starks said. “Now I feel nervous about what I can and can’t say.”
Brandt Robinson, a high school history teacher in Palm Harbor, north-west of Tampa, still feels the sting from when an activist for the conservative lobbying group Moms for Liberty berated him at a school board meeting, accusing him of teaching critical race theory and “engaging in Marxist indoctrination of our youth”. She also asserted that part of Robinson’s African American history curriculum was “inherently racist”.
“There have been some moments of real anxiety and even some terror,” Robinson said. “The point is intimidation. The point is that we will self-censor and shy away from material. I think all this promotes intolerance and undermines many of the core values of education. Everything we do as teachers to promote critical thinking is undermined by what they are doing. They’re very much modeling the kind of indoctrination that they’re so fast to accuse other people of.”
Robinson, who has a master’s in American history and helps develop curriculum and train teachers, said some social studies teachers have told him they’re so afraid that they have modified some lessons. “In the past, they might have had a student read a slave narrative or read aloud from primary sources about slavery, but they might not now.”
The reason: they fear being accused of making students uncomfortable. Florida’s “stop woke” law prohibits teachers from making students “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin”. Florida requires that educators teach about slavery in many history and social studies classes, but many teachers say the new law has caused them to balk at teaching about Jim Crow, lynchings or the horrors of slavery for fear of being accused of making white students feel uncomfortable.
DeSantis and his accomplices basically want to indoctrinate kids into white supremacy. It’s not as if they aren’t unconscious of their biases and haven’t questioned them as might have been the case for many in the past. (Not that that’s an excuse.) In this case, they know exactly what they’re doing and are gleefully intimidating teachers and administrators into making sure students are taught white supremacy, patriarchy and intolerance — or else. It’s super dangerous, cultural revolution stuff.