Facts matter: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter. Support our nonprofit reporting. Subscribe to our print magazine.
Florida has a new addition to the long, absurd list of topics it considers too “woke” to tolerate: math textbooks.
When vetting math books for K–12 classes, the state education commissioner rejected 41 percent of submissions because of “references to Critical Race Theory (CRT), inclusions of Common Core, and the unsolicited addition of Social Emotional Learning (SEL) in mathematics,” the state announced yesterday in a press release titled, “Florida Rejects Publishers’ Attempts to Indoctrinate Students.”
The press release does not provide any examples of the offending material, but it does say that 54 of 132 submitted textbooks were rejected, including 71 percent of materials proposed for grades K–5. The materials did not comply with the state’s educational standards, which apparently emphasize real-world context for math problems and discourage “unsolicited strategies” such as “culturally responsive teaching.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has made education—and stoking fears of child indoctrination by liberals—one of his top priorities. In 2019, he signed an executive order eliminating Common Core, a set of educational standards introduced in 2010 to improve students’ academic performance and standardize what kids learn in different states. He followed that up by proposing the notorious Stop W.O.K.E. Act, which seeks to shield students and workers from feeling “guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress for actions, in which he or she played no part, committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex.” Last but not least is the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill, signed into law last month, which imposes broad restrictions on how educators can talk about gender and sexuality.
“It is unfortunate that several publishers, especially at the elementary school grade levels, have…attempted to slip rebranded instructional materials based on Common Core Standards into Florida’s classrooms,” the Florida Department of Education said in its press release, as if the math problems were Fight Club-style subliminal messaging. “Others have included prohibited and divisive concepts such as the tenants [sic] of CRT or other unsolicited strategies of indoctrination – despite FDOE’s prior notification.”
thefugue on April 17th, 2022 at 14:31 UTC »
If any of you expect “examples” of why they’re rejecting books you don’t know what kind of hustle you’re looking at.
This is McCarthyism. They already lied to their base about a danger to their kids that wasn’t there and their base believes them- they don’t need “examples” or “evidence.” What they need is the illusion of danger. So they’ll keep banning books you can’t know the names of, removing texts for reasons they won’t say, etc. The whole idea is to mobilize their base into a mob. That’s the whole thing, keep them feeling like there’s a threat.
IF they find any kind of offensive material in textbooks they’ll trot it out, but it will be something stupid and psychologically telling like when they were upset about the green M&M.
fattailwagging on April 17th, 2022 at 14:08 UTC »
Common Core math is not the problem; lack of fluency in math by parents is the problem. Common Core does not teach math much differently than previous approaches, it does require students to think more broadly about mathematics. What has changed considerably is the rate that math is taught; it goes much faster now than in the 80s (so that we can remain competitive with other countries that are doing the same thing). Kids are taking algebra, trigonometry and geometry classes in middle school. In the past algebra wasn’t normally until high school. They can then take calculus in their sophomore year of high school and are into some relatively advanced math. When parents try to help their kids with math homework, they have no idea what is going on because they either didn’t take, or don’t remember algebra (much less calculus) and it is more comfortable to blame Common Core than admit they suck at math.
TranquilSeaOtter on April 17th, 2022 at 13:08 UTC »
I really wish the GOP would provide specific examples and show us what they mean. Otherwise I'm gonna assume they are getting offended when a math problem uses a non white name.