The Florida State Board of Education, has approved new standards for teaching students about the history of African American people. The new approach to this historic situation assures that slavery was a personal benefit for African Americans because it helped some of them develop new skills.
The new standards for high schools were approved on Wednesday, July 26, and have made used of notable controversial language to describe slavery. According to the 2023 standards in social studies posted by the Florida Department of Education, “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”
Similarly, Marylynn Magar, a board member appointed by Florida Governor, Ron DeSantis, expressed that the new history standards to be taught to learners are correct and seek to address the darkest parts of their history. In contrast, The Florida Education Association, which represents about 150,000 teachers said about the situation that “a disservice to Florida’s students and are a big step backward for a state that has required teaching African American history since 1994.”
The new education orders spawn from Ron DeSantis’ “Stop Wrongs To Our Kids and Employees Act,” or “Stop WOKE Act,” which was met with controversy. However, experts assure that the new education updates were accurate because they were done with rigourous instruction purposes.
On the same line, a spokesperson from the Florida Department of Education said that it was “dissapointing” to see detractors devaluating the research that was put to elaborate the new curriculum and later stated that they were “few isolated expressions without context.”
