Florida cannot keep its name out of the news these weeks. The latest issue the state government has is over math textbooks. And the issue has nothing to do with math.
The Florida Department of Education said that the state of Florida will be rejecting 41 percent of new math textbooks from next school year’s curriculum. The governmental state department cited references to critical race theory as one of the foremost reasons for rejecting the school textbooks.
Florida has a new set of standards that are included in its prohibited topics list for school textbooks.
This marks the largest rejected books in a school textbook submission ever in state history for Florida.
Critical race theory is not the only topic included in the rejections pile. Inclusions of “Common Core” and what the state cited as “unsolicited addition of Social Emotional Learning (SEL) in mathematics) were the other reasons for the rejection of textbooks in addition to critical race theory.
Republican Governor Ron DeSantis said today that there were different reasons for rejecting all of these books, and claimed that Florida officials want to focus education on “strong academic performance.”
In a verbal statement, the governor continued that he does not want things like math to have “you know, some of these other concepts introduced.” Academic experts say it has shown the governor’s bias in topics.
Scholars who study critical race theory say that the topic explores American history in an accurate method in order to discuss a history of inequality and racism, and how these issues impact our society today.
But in Florida, lawmakers outright banned the lessons in it. In June 2021, DeSantis said that critical race theory would teach children “the country is rotten.” Historians and education experts have said that this is a flawed understanding of history, as well as education, and shows a refusal to actually reckon with the realities of history.
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