Vice President Kamala Harris.Photo: Nicholas Kamm/Getty
Vice PresidentKamala Harriscalled the Florida Board of Education’s newly approved guidelines on how to teach slavery an “attempt to gaslight us” as thenew academic standard requires middle schools to teach Florida studentsthat enslaved people “developed skills” that “could be applied for their personal benefit.”
“Speaking of our children, extremists pass book bans to prevent them from learning our true history – book bans in this year of our Lord 2023,” Harris, 58,said in a speech atDelta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc.’s 56th national convention in Indianapolis Thursday. “And while they do this, check it out, they push forward revisionist history.”
“Just yesterday in the state of Florida, they decided middle school students will be taught that enslaved people benefited from slavery,” Harris continued. “They insult us in an attempt to gaslight us, and we will not stand for it.”
Vice President Kamala Harris visits the site of the Highland Park, Illinois, mass shooting in 2022.Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
The academic standards were approved on Wednesday in response to Florida’s 2022 “Stop WOKE Act,” which requires race to be taught in “an objective manner” that does not “indoctrinate or persuade students to a particular point of view.”
After the State Board of Education adopted the new standards, the Florida Education Association, a statewide teachers' union, called the changes a “big step backward for a state that has required teaching African American history since 1994.”
“How can our students ever be equipped for the future if they don’t have a full, honest picture of where we’ve come from? Florida’s students deserve a world-class education that equips them to be successful adults who can help heal our nation’s divisions rather than deepen them,” FEA president Andrew Sparwrote in a press release.
Elementary school students will also be asked to “identify"Rosa Parks, George Washington Carver, Zora Neale Hurston, and other famous African Americans without being taught their “histories and struggles,” the union wrote.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.SUZANNE CORDEIRO/AFP via Getty
SUZANNE CORDEIRO/AFP via Getty
“Evidently in an attempt to protect students from wokeness, these new standards will make sure that, through the fourth grade, elementary school students' knowledge of African American history doesn’t extend beyond being able to know who a famous African American is when they see them,” the release states.
The new standards were approved months after Florida Gov.Ron DeSantis' administrationrejected a new Advanced Placement courseon African American history in January. It is the College Board’s first new class since 2014.
Never miss a story — sign up forto stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter
In a letter, the Florida Department of Education Office of Articulation said the course “lacks educational value and is contrary to Florida law,“adding that, “In the future, should College Board be willing to come back to the table with lawful, historically accurate content, FDOE will always be willing to reopen the discussion.”
DeSantis,who began his 2024 presidential campaign in May, has also sought to reshape educational policy in the Sunshine State through theso-called “Don’t Say Gay” law. The “Parental Rights in Education” bill took effect in July 2022 andbans discussion of certain LGBTQ+ topicsin public schools, including gender identity and sexual orientation.
source: people.com
