A.G. Gancarski
Get ready to make room for Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels next to the multiplication tables, as the Florida House has voted for Senate legislation requiring a history of communism to be taught in state schools.
SB 1264, previously passed by a 25-7 vote in the Senate, is similar enough to Chuck Brannan’s companion measure HB 1349 (“History and Instruction of Political and Socio-economic Systems”) to where the House sponsor had no problem using Senate language.
Both versions require students in traditional public and charter K-12 schools to receive instruction on the history of communism beginning in the 2026-27 academic year in what is billed as an age-appropriate and developmentally-appropriate way.
Brannan notes that nothing in the bill says that kindergarteners would be taught about the depredations of communism, but it’s unclear at what age they would learn about the Soviet Union, Cuba, China, and other collectivist police states.
The bill would also compel the creation of a museum of history of communism, create the Institute for Freedom in Americas at Miami Dade College, and rename the Adam Smith Center for Study of Economic Freedom as the Adam Smith Center for Economic Freedom.
“Totalitarian regimes,” according to Brannan, would also be covered in the bill.
There is a key party split on these bills among actual voters, meanwhile.
Polling conducted by Sachs Media found Republicans were overwhelmingly supportive (74%) of an effort to teach K-12 students about the “horrors of communism. By comparison, only 41% of Democrats believe kids need a crash course on Soviet genocide.
To that end, Democrats pushed for more detail on the bill, with Angola and Haiti coming up in questions, and the sponsor saying “totalitarianism would encompass that also.”
A series of Democratic amendments were considered Tuesday.
One trying to bring in “McCarthyism” from Rep. Angie Nixon was summarily rejected.
A Rep. Ashley Gantt provision to explicitly include “communist policies of Russia and the spread of communist ideologies throughout Europe including the roots of the Soviet Union” was likewise rejected.
A second Gantt amendment stipulating the “Department of Education shall ensure that instruction on communism shall be taught at any K-12 school that receives public funding including funding via vouchers” likewise failed.
Gantt scored a hat trick with her third rejected amendment, saying the “Department of Education shall establish curriculum standards to be used in grades K-12 that demonstrate the dangers of the rhetoric and actions of the January 6, 2021, insurrection attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election and how such rhetoric and actions may create a pathway to communism.”
11 comments
ScienceBLVR
March 5, 2024 at 4:21 pm
What? Lessons on the horrors of Communism in the world, but none about McCarthy and his disgusting fear-mongering pursuit of those evil Communists in the good ole USA?
Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness …..Have you no sense of decency?
I might ask our legislators the same question..
MH/Duuuval
March 6, 2024 at 9:54 pm
MAGA toadies have no shame and nothing you can say will alter their self-image as saviors of the Republic.
Jay Smif
March 5, 2024 at 4:21 pm
Yep, Florida “education” is pure conservative groomer propaganda indoctrination now, and the next generation of Florida students will be unemployable and worthless.
Julia
March 5, 2024 at 5:10 pm
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tom palmer
March 5, 2024 at 6:48 pm
nothing about the other 9/11 in Chile and the torture and disappearances that followed or the mass graves in the Guatemalan highlands etc. etc. etc. We had this in high school civic classes 60 years ago. It is just right-wing politics from the John Birch Society era.
MH/Duuuval
March 6, 2024 at 12:16 pm
Apparently only the dreaded government schools will be required to study “collectivist police states” but not voucher schools which have religion as their opiate.
Flori-Duh
March 6, 2024 at 3:50 pm
Kids in other states will still be learning this stuff though. Which will put Florida kids at a huge intellectual disadvantage in the future.
MH/Duuuval
March 6, 2024 at 9:55 pm
Florida: where the boys are the squarest.
My Take
March 8, 2024 at 2:25 am
Florids … right next to the Caribbean and near Central America with their extensive histories of rightwing pro-business, pro-latifundist, mostly military dictatorships.
And the region’s history of US military tuggery!
What a teaching opportunity.
My Take
March 8, 2024 at 4:06 am
“Florida” “Thuggery”
(I need an editor!)
======
In high school, after some years of this GOPer indoctrination, every student should read Marine Corps General Smedley Butler’s book “War Is a Racket” and learn how America rose to internatonal prominance.
Google him. Read his quotes.
For example:
“I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.”
My Take
March 8, 2024 at 8:19 pm
The GOPer plan is basically the Communist student-indoctrination plan simply in reverse.
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