In the latest manifestation of a whipped-up political furor over “critical race theory”, Florida’s Education Department has banned 54 mathematics textbooks.
Republican politicians, from the local level to Washington, have invoked critical race theory — with no apparent comprehension of the academic and legal discipline — to pursue office and to push back campaigns for social and racial justice, following the May 2020 murder of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis.
Florida’s officials maintained that the maths textbooks did not comply with the state’s content standards and/or “because they incorporate prohibited topics or unsolicited strategies, including CRT”.
The Education Department did not list the titles of the books or provide extracts to justify their exclusion. Nor did they explain how any of the texts invoked critical race theory, which examines the role of race in the development of US legal, political, economic, and social codes and practices.
Instead, Governor Ron DeSantis — a Trumpist running for re-election this year and with Presidential ambitions in 2024 — thundered that publishers are “indoctrinating” children with “concepts like race essentialism, especially, bizarrely, for elementary school students”.
He gave no evidence for his declaration.
DeSantis recently signed legislation banning classroom discussion on LGBTQ issues from kindergarten through third grade. The bill also demands that for all students, discussion must be “age appropriate or developmentally appropriate”.
The governor is expected to soon sign the “Stop Woke Act” which expands executive order, restricting how private companies can promote diversity, equity, and inclusion.
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