(LifeSiteNews) – Florida’s efforts to “de-woke” public education materials are already paying dividends, with the state Department of Education announcing that textbook publishers “are aligning their instructional materials to state standards and removing woke content.”
The Florida DOE announced last week that this development has allowed the state “to add 19 more books to the state adoption list over the past 17 days,” the Daily Caller reported.
UPDATE: In the past 17 days, the Florida Department of Education has been able to add 19 more textbooks to the state adoption list, due to the publishers making changes to align materials to our state standards — per @EducationFL
— Christina Pushaw 🐊 🇺🇸 (@ChristinaPushaw) May 3, 2022
The department had previously announced the rejection of 41% of math textbooks that had been submitted for review for containing ideologically-charged “indoctrinating concepts” such as Critical Race Theory (CRT), Social Emotional Learning (SEL), and Common Core. Examples include graphs falsely claiming conservatives have higher “levels of racial prejudice” than liberals, and material stating an objective to have students “build proficiency with social awareness,” a common euphemism for affinity with left-wing social causes.
Florida’s Dept. of Education released examples of the CRT-inspired material in math textbooks and here ya have it
Kids are being told that conservatives and more racially prejudice than liberals based on data from a debunked test https://t.co/M7wBJkoEvP pic.twitter.com/WvWZaTVjs2
— Chrissy Clark (@chrissyclark_) April 21, 2022
“We have high standards and reject books with unacceptable content because we know that publishers can easily adjust their materials to meet our guidelines, as displayed by the fact that it took less than two weeks for additional publishers to amend entire books, resubmit them and get put on the adoption list,” FLDOE press secretary Cassie Palelis said. “We hope to add instructional materials to the state adoption list as additional publishers address our concerns and meet our standards.”
Last year, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis announced a state curriculum overhaul that would “expressly exclude unsanctioned narratives like critical race theory and other unsubstantiated theories,” because “our schools are supposed to give people a foundation of knowledge, not supposed to be indoctrination centers, where you’re trying to push specific ideologies.”
More recently, DeSantis signed laws requiring public schools to make classroom materials available for parental review, as well as a Parental Rights in Education law that bans schools from teaching children in kindergarten through third grade about transgenderism and other sexuality-related issues, limits discussions of sexuality for older children to “age appropriate” content, and requires parents to be informed of any changes that could affect their child’s physical, emotional, or mental well-being.
The latter in particular has made Florida a focal point of intense left-wing anger while helping to further endear the conservative governor to conservative voters across the country.