GOP members move to stop teachers from being indoctrinated with ‘identity politics, woke ideology’
Classroom. Credit: Getty Images
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The Florida House voted Friday to approve a bill restricting curricula for educator preparation programs and courses. The effort is similar to the 2022 policy in the Legislature that was meant to remove instruction on systemic racism, sexism, oppression and privilege from public schools.
Republican lawmakers positioned HB 1291 as an attempt to stop teachers from being indoctrinated with “identity politics and woke ideology,” whereas Democrats said it was another attempt to erase history.
The state Senate and the governor still have to approve the bill.
Pinellas County Republican Rep. Berny Jacques. Courtesy of the Florida House of Representatives.
“If you have the educators themselves who are being indoctrinated along the way. They were being indoctrinated when they were coming up as teachers, and, now, they’re being indoctrinated in their continuing education courses,” said Republican Rep. Berny Jacques of Pinellas County. He is one of the sponsors of the bill. “So it still seeps through, and this is what this bill is about. This bill is about filling in that gap and enforcing the great policies that we passed to stop woke indoctrination in our schools.”
HB 1291 and its Senate companion state that educator certification programs and school leader preparation programs “may not distort significant historical events or include a curriculum or instruction that teaches identity politics, or is based on theories that systemic racism, sexism, oppression, and privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States and were created to maintain social, political, and economic inequities.”
During the heated debate, Republican lawmakers insisted that the bill wouldn’t affect topics such as slavery, the Civil War, or the Jim Crow era. However, Democratic Rep. Michele Rayner, who represents Hillsborough and Pinellas counties, said the bill would hamper the understanding of why those events happened.
“We have heard that this bill will not ignore the history of slavery or Jim Crow, but it will ignore the why. It will ignore the why because the why is what makes folks feel uncomfortable,” Rayner said. “The why is what we actually need to sit in if we want to become the society that we say that we want to become. The why is what we have to actually deal with. That is why this bill is a problem.”
African American history standards
Lawmakers also harkened back to the African American history standards that caused controversy in July because they included a description of slavery as beneficial for some slaves who learned skills. North Florida Republican Rep. Alex Andrade denied that the standards stated slavery was beneficial and said that some enslaved people received payment for their work.
“There is only one way to teach about slavery in Florida, and that is that it was evil. But if we can’t have an honest discussion and say that some slaves were paid for their work and were able to actually get a portion of payment that slave owners received for their labor, then we’re afraid of teaching accurate history,” Andrade said. “If you were not aware that some slaves received payment, not payment that was good, not payment that was valid, not payment that was moral. But if we can’t even have that discussion in this room, what hope do we have to teach and actually agree on facts?”
House Democratic Leader Fentrice Driskell was displeased with Andrade’s comments. “Ya’ll tried it today, and I’ve sat here and I’ve listened. I’ve been as patient as I can,” she said.
Driskell continued: “This is a difference of perception versus reality. You cannot read those standards to me and try to try a false equivalency between slaves making money and them benefiting from slavery. How dare we in this chamber?”
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