Since last year, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (whom Trump christened “Ron DeSanctimonious”) has been striving, with great success, to clamp down on Florida school curriculums, spearheading a national right-wing reactionary movement to control and limit public education.
It started with the “Parental Rights in Education Bill”, or more commonly known as the “Don’t Say Gay Bill.” The bill prohibits schools from teaching about sexuality and gender to students younger than fourth grade and requires fourth-grade and above instruction on issues of sexuality and gender to be “age-appropriate,” though the text of the bill does not define what “age-appropriate” means. Notably, it does not actually include the word ‘gay’ or make any reference to the LGBTQIA+ community. At a press conference soon after, DeSantis was quoted as saying, “[the bill] makes sure that Florida students and teachers will never be forced to declare pronouns in school or be forced to use pronouns not based on biological sex.” The bill gives Florida custody over children who receive gender-affirming care, taking them away from their parents. It also requires schools to notify parents if there is a change in a student’s physical or mental health, and requires school officials to encourage students to speak to their parents about issues related to well-being. Nowhere in the language of the bill does ‘gay’ or ‘queer’ come up per se. However, Frightened school officials have banned books with queer content from their libraries and prevented the formation of LGBTQ clubs among the student body. The bill has since been expanded to encompass all school grades.
He followed it up with the “Individual Freedom Bill,” often derogatorily called the “Anti-Woke” bill, which prohibits any curriculum that makes students feel guilty about race relations, among a number of other topics. Like the first bill, it doesn’t actually reference a particular political concept or buzzword, but DeSantis has included it as a major element of his political platform as a centerpiece to his “
A variety of other bills sprung up soon after, covering other issues of race, gender, and disability.. Some ban certain books, while others limit the use of preferred pronouns. Another dictates which bathrooms students can use.
In the wake of this flurry of legislation, a number of other states have followed suit. 17 states enacted bills restricting what students can be taught about gender and sexuality and 9 others allow teachers to ignore a student’s preferred pronouns.
However, many have applauded the new bills, especially those aimed at improving school academics and resources. House Bill 7039, which DeSantis signed without fanfare, put 158 million dollars into the Florida school system to boost reading and math scores. It provides individualized education plans to students who display symptoms of dyscalculia (a learning disability that impairs spatial reasoning and mathematical acumen) before fourth grade. Notably, this bill has not been part of DeSantis’ presidential campaign or his “Let Kids Be Kids” bill-signing event, in which he asserted that Florida would be a “citadel of normalcy.”
Credit: Vox
As he seeks to strengthen educational curricula and boost school performance in Florida, he likewise strives to exclude Critical Race Theory and wokeness from his citadel, at least according to his official gubernatorial website. At his “Let Kids Be Kids” event, DeSantis celebrated his victories in “outlawing permanent mutilation of minors” by criminalizing what medical professionals call gender-affirming care, “protecting children’s innocence” by imposing fines on venues that host drag performers, “ensuring women’s safety” by enforcing the biological sex division in bathroom use, and a number of other politico-cultural changes now enshrined in law.