Textbook publishers will comply with a demand from Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to remove “woke content.” The Florida Department of Education on Tuesday announced that “publishers are aligning their instructional materials to state standards and removing woke content allowing the department of education to add 19 more books to the state adoption list over the past 17 days.”
The Florida Department of education flagged graphics that included leftist language on “equity” determined by race and political affiliation. In addition, a portion of the state’s “social emotional learning” curriculum was ruled to have been “designed to build student agency by focusing on students’ social and emotional learning.”
Even math textbooks were found to include leftist ideology in word problems and equations. One textbook showed data comparing racial prejudice to political affiliation as the basis for a few math questions. Another was removed because it falsely claimed natural immunity was ineffective against COVID-19 when compared with vaccination.
“Reasons for rejecting textbooks included references to Critical Race Theory (CRT), inclusions of Common Core, and the unsolicited addition of Social Emotional Learning (SEL) in mathematics,” Florida’s Department of Education said in a statement.
“The highest number of books rejected were for grade levels K-5, where an alarming 71 percent were not appropriately aligned with Florida standards or included prohibited topics and unsolicited strategies,” the department added.
DeSantis has long been a vocal opponent of CRT/DEI-themed curriculum in Florida classrooms. In January 2020, the governor announced new academic standards for the state, which were designed to replace Common Core standards. The new standards were titled, “Benchmarks for Excellent Student Thinking,” or “B.E.S.T.”
Under Florida’s B.E.S.T standards, the use of CRT/DEI terminology is prohibited. All of this led to the textbook review, which ultimately led to the rejection of 54 books out of 132 proposed books.
