How can our students ever be equipped for the future if they don’t have a full, honest picture of where we’ve come from?
The Florida Board of Education’s approved new standards for how Black history should be taught in public schools has been heavily criticized.
Listen to Vice President Kamala Harris talk about the revisionist, whitewashing African American history standards the Florida Board of Education recently passed.
Extremists want to “replace history with lies.”
The new standards require instruction for middle school students to include “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”
It is ridiculous to suggest that African Americans benefited from slavery. Teaching a truthful history matters. It is unacceptable to suggest the Ocoee Massacre violence was BY African Americans. It is also ridiculous that important parts of history have been left out, such as Brown vs. Board of Ed. Truth matters. African American history is America’s history.
We shouldn’t be establishing watered down African American History standards. We shouldn’t be continuing to expand “Don’t Say Gay”. We shouldn’t be threatening teachers for using pronouns students prefer. Instead we should be focusing on making our schools more welcoming for all students. We should be paying teachers better so we wouldn’t have an enormous teacher shortage. But instead the Florida state board of ed just continues pushing unneccessary culture wars that have real negative consequences on students and teachers.
Read the full speech made by Vice President Kamala Harris at www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2023/07/21/remarks-by-vice-president-harris-on-the-florida-state-board-of-education-curriculum-updates.
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