206: How Being Anti-History Hurts All Of Us

When people think of the government or they think about elections, they often think about presidential elections, and big federal government. But more often than not, our daily lives are hugely impacted by the decisions made by our state and local governments - and this impacts one very high-profile area in particular. Our children, in our schools.

In the news recently was the headline that Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida was banning the Advanced Placement high school course on African American studies - which, incidentally, is the same curriculum that is taught in ALL 50 STATES, because it violated state law and “lacks educational value.”  They were worried about sections on “Intersectionality and Activism,” “Black Feminist Literary Theory” “Black Queer Studies” and Critical Race Theory (which, incidentally, was in the accusations but the theory itself was not going to be taught in the class b/c it’s a college graduate level course that would be too difficult for high school students even in a college-level course - we did a whole episode on this, in case you’re wondering what is the DEAL with CRT?).  

What laws are we talking about?  A new one that requires lessons on race be taught in “an objective manner” and “not used to indoctrinate or persuade students to a particular point of view” - and ones that have been banning books and discussions about gender and sexuality in the classroom in Florida in the name of “parents rights”.  All of this has been having a chilling effect on the 2.8 million students in the classrooms who are no longer really learning about the full scope of American history, nor are they able to discuss their own gender or sexuality, that of their family, their friends, nor the history of queer folks in America.   Keep in mind, though, AP courses on European history have not been scrutinized by the DeSantis administration. Wonder why….  

So yeah.  We’re on our civics kick, and we are bringing you back to the discussion we had in April 2022 on banned books, the role that school boards and states have in banned books, curriculum, and so much more. This is the year of doing - so get out there, and make your voice heard. 

What to listen for: 

What IS critical race theory, actually?   How CRT been misused to discuss culturally relevant teaching We think anti-CRT should just be called anti-history  The (frightening) increase in book bans recently - even when polls are showing the majority of American voters and parents are opposed to book bans What you can do right now to get loud

The petition we mentioned: 

https://naacp.org/actions/demand-educational-freedom-florida