It should surprise absolutely no one that education officials in Florida can’t imagine students not being on board with their obsession with banning books and fighting their propaganda war against critical race theory. It must be “indoctrination” right? Because young people couldn’t possibly possess the critical thinking capacity to decide for themselves that the conservative gatekeeping of education is less about protecting students and more about protecting social regressives from their own fragility.
According to WESH 2, an Orange County middle school teacher was placed on administrative leave over a series of TikTok videos where he and his students mocked the decision to ban books in order to comply with Gov. Ron DeSantis’ white fragility laws disguised as education reform.
“Orange County Public Schools will not tolerate the use of our children as political pawns by anyone, including a classroom teacher,” the district said in reference to the videos recorded by Ethan Hooper, a Black sixth-grade language arts teacher at Howard Middle School. “Any employee who creates videos or other content with students in an effort to exploit them for political purposes will be immediately removed from the classroom, placed on administrative leave, and swift action will be taken to terminate employment.”
Superintendent Maria Vazquez echoed the same sentiments in her own statement.
“I am appalled at the behavior and judgment of the teacher who posted the inappropriate videos using his students as political props,” Vazquez said. “This is not free speech—it is the exploitation of our students for political purposes, and it will not be tolerated in our school district.”
First of all—nah, this is absolutely about free speech. Conservatives have this tendency to try to dictate what free speech is or isn’t based solely on the content of the speech. If a teacher recorded a video with students praising America as the…
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