Yahoo Movies First student to enroll in Florida’s new civics course should be autocratic Gov. DeSantis | Opinion
The state of Florida’s education system can’t find the exit out of caricature mode.
As if last year’s legislative session weren’t enough of a spectacle, now legislators want to forbid the use of “they” as a singular pronoun in schools — or any other, for that matter, that isn’t the one assigned to a student at birth.
Fluid gender identity is beyond the reach of Republicans’ IQ level.
So is classic art — and an educator has lost her job because of it.
The principal of the Tallahassee Classical School was forced out after parents complained that sixth-graders were shown Michelangelo’s famous “David” sculpture. One called the iconic 16th century masterpiece “pornography” prohibited under Florida law, the Tallahassee Democrat reports.
The foolishness is only going to hit a higher pitch.
To go along with retrograde censorship and repression, there will soon be an elaborate patriotic indoctrination program, unveiled Thursday in Clay County by Gov. Ron DeSantis and his education commissioner, Manny Díaz Jr.
One has to love the irony: Censored educators teaching civics!
This dog-and-pony show may backfire, however, at least in higher grades. In an attempt to turn the next generation of Florida’s children into nationalist right-wingers by overhauling the state’s education system, DeSantis seems blind to his own reality.
If students really get into truthful nation-building and constitutional lessons allegedly embedded in their new civics “excellence” course, they’re more likely to come to the conclusion that the governor and his GOP-dominant Legislature are undemocratic to the extreme.
For starters, students would find little separation of powers left in this red state, given its voter suppression laws and initiatives.
The Founding Fathers wisely favored a system of checks and balances, something that is no longer valued here — and Republicans are darn proud of it.
Their total dominance of the state’s executive, legislative and judicial branches has so emboldened them that a top GOP leader filed a bill to abolish the Democratic Party — and the state’s GOP chairman publicly boasted about it.
READ MORE: Like the hemisphere’s evil regimes, crafty Florida GOP craves a one-party state | Opinion
Price of DeSantis-styled civics
I’d like to be a fly on the wall of Florida classrooms when teachers — getting a $3,000 stipend to take a civics course to learn how DeSantis wants the subject taught — get around to the lesson on free speech and the First Amendment.
In Florida, free speech only exists for Republicans adulating, agreeing and serving the governor. Everyone else finds theirs under threat, already curtailed, like those of gay and trans students, or eroding, as is the case for media this legislative season.
Not even respected groups like the nonpartisan League of Women Voters — denied permission to hold a rally on the steps of the Capitol during the legislative session — are allowed a voice in policy-making.
Again, the founders set up a form of government for The People, not for politicians to abuse.
A Florida autocracy
But it’s no secret that Florida is operating as a de facto autocracy, in which one person has absolute power.
His political clout at an all-time high, DeSantis outlines his agenda — one he’s banking on to raise his national profile — and that’s all the Legislature takes up, no matter the needs of constituents.
A bill to mitigate the high level of blasting ripping through Miami-Dade homes every weekday, as much as three times a day sometimes, is stalled at first reading. And nowhere on the legislative agenda are insurance woes like the double-whammy of the rising cost of homeowner association insurance for high-rises also facing huge increases in assessments to make expensive repairs.
But bills to serve DeSantis’ purposes fly from one committee to another and — presto! — become law when he signs them.
The Legislature, for example, fast-tracked a measure that legitimizes the moves DeSantis made in his publicity stunt to fly immigrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard. And legislators also are trying to abolish Florida’s heralded open-records laws to keep journalists from unearthing both DeSantis’ and their own wrongdoings.
Shameful.
Without the legal need to fill freedom of information requests that inform journalists, they’ll deal a blow to investigations like the prize-winning Miami Herald stories piecing together the inside story of DeSantis’ Machiavellian immigrant flights.
They’re that brazenly against the rights to a free press the Founding Fathers guaranteed in the First Amendment. Can’t wait for students to reach that chapter in American history.
But, most likely, no teacher paid by DeSantis to indoctrinate them will teach that, by the standards set long ago, and certainly those of the modern world, the governor’s behavior is un-American.
But perhaps one brilliant student with critical-thinking skills will recognize it — challenge the teacher and offer his point of view.
DeSantis, who gave the false appearance Thursday that no one has ever taught civics in Florida, has a selective vision of freedom, civic worth, and history.
He dehumanizes immigrants in a nation founded by them.
He caters to extreme right-wing Christian lifestyle choices, though the first Americans fled religious persecution and embraced religious freedom for the new nation. There’s not an ounce of care in DeSantis’ agenda, for example, for the rights of pro-choice and gay-accepting Presbyterians and Catholics.
Yes, Florida students have a lot to learn about civics, and the lessons might make them proud Americans. But I doubt they’ll be proud Floridians, in the state where stupid thrives.
