Ron DeSantis Defends New Florida Curriculum To Teach Slavery’s ‘Benefit,’ Says ‘Scholars’ Are Behind It

People.com; Published By Virginia Chamlee

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said on Friday that new education standards around teaching slavery in Florida schools will show that enslaved people were able to “parlay” the skills they were forced to learn.

DeSantis, who was speaking to reporters during an event in Utah, defended a new set of academic standards in his state that will require middle schools to teach that enslaved people “developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit” — a line that has ignited significant controversy among teachers’ groups and parents in the state.

“They’re probably going to show that some of the folks that eventually parlayed, you know, being a blacksmith into doing things later in life,” DeSantis said, adding that “scholars” put together the standards, which he said were “rooted in whatever is factual.”

DeSantis also tried to distance himself from the standards, saying, “I didn’t do it. I wasn’t involved in it.”

But the standards — which were approved by Florida’s Board of Education last week despite pleas from a statewide teachers’ union — come in response to the state’s 2022 “Stop WOKE Act,” a piece of legislation championed by DeSantis himself that stated that race must be taught in “an objective manner” that does not “indoctrinate or persuade students to a particular point of view.”

The act pushed far-right lawmakers’ rhetoric that teaching Black history makes White people feel ashamed, instructing that no student should be made to feel “guilt” or “responsibility” for actions previously committed by members of the same race. Read more