The DeSantistization of Public Education, and Developing Modern Republican Policy

Ron DeSantis
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By Steven Jonas

As is by now well-known, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has successfully engaged in a widespread censorship operation on what may, and may not, be taught to students in the Florida school/college/university system. There is irony in the fact that the formal announcement that U.S. College Board has acceded to the DeSantis’ demands for cutting a significant chunk of the meat of Afro-American history from the Board’s advanced placement course on the subject came on the same day as the funeral of the latest Black victim of U.S. police brutality, in Memphis. That irony cannot be understated. Furthermore the DeSantis-outrage just happened to come at the beginning of African History Month, 2023.

(Let me clearly state that I have no criticism for the College Board and doing what they did. They had to. A significant chunk of their income comes from fees paid for the use of the Advanced Placement courses, and about two dozen other states, reflecting the bourgeoning re-establishment of legal racial discrimination in the United Sates. have already made noises critical of the African-American Studies course as it was previously released.)

There are several different speculations that can be made about why DeSantis did this. One is that he is a genuine racist and that while as such, given the modern climate, he has to accede to certain demands made for increasing recognition of the importance of the Black experience, positive and negative, in the track of (North) American history since 1619. But, the thinking would go, based on his personal racism, given his political power in his state he can draw a series of lines around the subject(s).

On the other hand, he may simply be a political racist, wanting simply to stir up the subject to help him achieve his political goals and programmatic ends. First and foremost, of course, that would be helping him to gain the Republican Presidential nomination.

But whatever the case, DeSantis is cranking up government intervention in the matter of what and cannot be taught in Florida schools, colleges, and universities to heights not seen in the South since the formal censorship days of Jim Crow. And because College Board Advanced Placement courses are used all around the country, his intervention will have a very negative effect even in liberal states. This censorship operates at two levels.

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Source: OpEdNews.com