By TAIYLER SIMONE MITCHELL
This week, Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration stopped the instruction of Advanced Placement African American Studies courses in Florida schools.
According to ABC News, the Florida Department of Education described the history course as “inexplicably contrary to Florida law” and “significantly lacking in educational value.” According to The New York Times, the board cited the incorporation of Black feminist authors and advocates such as Angela Davis, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and bell hooks in the curriculum.
The College Board, on the other hand, describes the course as an interdisciplinary one that “reaches into a variety of fields — literature, the arts and humanities, political science, geography, and science — to explore the vital contributions and experiences of African Americans.” The College Board is piloting the course in numerous high schools across the country.
Jessica Vaughn, a member of the Hillsborough County School Board who serves Tampa’s District 3 to Insider, stated that she was “extremely upset and horrified, but not surprised” by the decision.
Vaughn previously told Insider’s Kelsey Vlamis that local elected officials like school board members should “have the ability to make decisions for the people who elected us,” despite the fact that she was speaking specifically about DeSantis’ anti-mask rule in schools beginning in 2021.
“They’ve been gradually undermining traditional public education in Florida, but ever since COVID, there’s been an accelerated kind of approach, and it seems part of that is to cause a lot of chaos and push a lot of far-right politics when it comes to education,” Vaughn said on Saturday to Insider.
Florida has recently introduced a slew of severe legislation aimed at restricting the teaching of race and gender, including the Stop Woke Act, a prohibition on Critical Race Theory, and the Don’t Say Gay Act. The state also imposed limitations on classroom libraries.
“We will never surrender to the woke mob,” DeSantis said during his inauguration address earlier this month. “Florida is where the awake go to die.”
At his introduction, DeSantis added, “We must make sure that our institutions of higher learning are focused on academic excellence and the pursuit of truth, not the imposition of trendy ideologies.”
According to Vaughn, “the laws are very ambiguous and vague, and at the very least, if they’re going to make very strong laws like this, having guidance and clarification on those are really important, or else it leaves everyone in a grey area.”
She went on to say that the legislation has a “chilling” impact on educators, who will most likely decline to teach such topics in order to maintain their jobs.
“I’m not sure where the answer is. Aside from the decline of conventional public education, it just feels like democracy is eroding,” Vaughn told Insider. “When you choose that teachers can’t teach history or can’t have inclusive classrooms that support all of their students or you don’t want anything taught that resembles socialism — even though that’s a basic form of government, you should be studying all of them,” she added.
The offices of DeSantis, the College Board, and the Florida Department of Education did not reply quickly to Insider’s request for comment.