Democrats and their media arm get more ridiculous by the day. Not content to lie about and misrepresent Florida’s Parental Rights in Education Act, even going so far as to claim that it bans saying the word “gay”!, they piled on about “book bans,” falsely claiming that Florida’s prohibition of kiddie porn in public school libraries, including in “cartoon” form, is a “book ban.”
Activist ‘teachers’ and their allies on school boards and districts immediately emptied their classroom bookshelves, cynically claiming that they were too scared to have any books in their classrooms. And they are apparently incapable of telling the difference between a book for third graders that depicts oral sex very explicitly and Ernest Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea. They know the law, but their goal is to politicize the issue and spread lies to the uninformed, so of course, activists in politics, the media, and assorted other Democrat groups happily helped them out by spreading “book ban” lies, even holding insane “banned books” events and putting up little libraries in front of their houses distributing kiddie porn.
This trend is now creeping into the weirdness that is “black history month.” Florida requires schools to teach American history, and this explicitly includes “black history,” but that hasn’t stopped teachers, schools, and districts from playing the same game they played with “don’t say gay” and nonexistent book bans.
Florida, by law, requires the teaching of “black history” (as if that’s not the same thing as American history, but whatever), and these K-12 education officials are well aware of that fact, but they are claiming that they need parental permission to teach it in the classroom in order to score political points not just against Florida governor Ron DeSantis, but against all Republicans in this election year.
Ill-informed, incurious casual “news” consumers see this stuff and actually believe it, and that is all that it takes to get people outraged at ‘racist’ Florida and its ‘racist’ GOP dominance. It’s cynical, it’s being done for purely political purposes (there is no way on this earth that any of these teachers or other school officials actually believe this is needed given the actual Florida law).
Florida officials are pushing back.
After a Miami school drew attention for requiring parental approval before students could participate in a book-reading activity for Black History Month, Florida education officials went on the offensive, admonishing the principal and accusing her of engaging in “nothing more than a political ploy.”. . . . The spat between the state and local school officials spiraled after a social media user on Monday shared a photo of a form requesting permission for students to “participate and listen to a book written by an African American.” The form described the guests that could attend as “fireman/doctor/artist,” but did not specify the book or author in question.. . . . Coral Way staff sent those forms home because the school district’s attorney’s office determined that in order to comply with the Parental Rights in Education law, guest speakers require parental permission forms, said the district’s chief academic officer, Lourdes Diaz, at a Miami-Dade School Board meeting Wednesday.. . . . But state officials criticized the move, saying the policy is an “absurd” interpretation of a state rule that they say is perpetuating a “hoax” that students in Florida need permission to learn about Black history.Furthermore, at a press conference Thursday, Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz and Gov. Ron DeSantis singled out the school as an example of how some local school officials have “politicized” state laws that they say are meant to empower parents to have more control over what their students learn in school.. . . . [Ben Gibson, the chair of the State Board of Education] said that the book-reading activity at Coral Way fell under the “routine curricular activities” and didn’t require parental permission.“Obviously, it is wrong to interpret the rule to require parental permission for a student to receive ordinary instruction, including on subjects required by state law and Department rule. In fact, I am not aware of any school in the state that has interpreted the rule in this way,” he said. “This should be obvious on its face, and therefore, those providing guidance to you and your school are either grossly misinterpreting the rule or simply engaged in nothing more than a political ploy.”Gibson copied Miami-Dade Public Schools Superintendent Jose Dotres on the letter and asked him to “immediately review this matter and take appropriate action.” He also asked the principal to update the procedure to avoid “unnecessarily asking parents to grant permission where the student is simply engaged in regular on-campus learning.”
Obviously, Gibson (and DeSantis) are not saying anything that these officials don’t already know. The goal is to spread fear and outrage, not to educate children or to abide by perfectly sensible state laws.
[EDIT, FS: I replaced a link above to a Gays Against Groomers X post depicting explicit pornographic illustrations from Gender Queer when it was brought to my attention that the link went to a “This page doesn’t exist” warning. It shows on my browser when I am logged into X, but it does not show up when a use another browser in which I am not logged into X. The new link includes the images I intended to link. I would say NSFW, but hey, if little kids can see this stuff in their public elementary schools that seems a bit ridiculous.]
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