Florida’s education bill is a key example of why we need to solve from the root cause, pedagogy --- otherwise is just reducing guilt

Florida’s public schools will now teach students that some Black people benefited from slavery because it taught them useful skills, part of new African American history standards approved Wednesday that were blasted by a state teachers' union as a “step backward.” The Florida State Board of Education’s new standards includes controversial language about how “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit,” according to a 216-page document about the state’s 2023 standards in social studies, posted by the Florida Department of Education. Other language that has drawn the ire of some educators and education advocates includes teaching about how Black people were also perpetrators of violence during race massacres. That language says, “Instruction includes acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans but is not limited to 1906 Atlanta Race Riot, 1919 Washington, D.C. Race Riot, 1920 Ocoee Massacre, 1921 Tulsa Massacre and the 1923 Rosewood Massacre.” The Florida Education Association, a statewide teachers’ union representing about 150,000 teachers, called the new standards “a disservice to Florida’s students and are a big step backward for a state that has required teaching African American history since 1994. “How can our students ever be equipped for the future if they don’t have a full, honest picture of where we’ve come from? Florida’s students deserve a world-class education that equips them to be successful adults who can help heal our nation’s divisions rather than deepen them,” Andrew Spar, president of the union, said in the statement. “Gov. DeSantis is pursuing a political agenda guaranteed to set good people against one another, and in the process he’s cheating our kids," Spar said. "They deserve the full truth of American history, the good and the bad.” The union said it is troubling that at the high school level, the standards conflate the 1920 Ocoee Massacre, when at least 30 African Americans were killed for attempting to vote, with “acts of violence perpetrated by African Americans.” And in middle school, the standards require students be taught slavery was beneficial to African Americans because it helped them develop skills, the union said.