Teacher training programs would have to stop instruction on systemic racism under this bill
Florida Phoenix | By Jackie Llanos | February 8, 2024
A proposal to restrict curricula for teacher education programs is making its way through the Florida Senate. The proposal hearkens back to efforts to remove instruction on systemic racism, sexism, oppression, and privilege from public schools.
Republican Sen. Blaise Ingoglia argued that removing identity politics from programs training teachers is necessary to block them from being transmitted to students.
SB 1372 states that educator certification programs and school leader preparation programs “may not distort significant historical events or include curriculum or instruction that teaches identity politics or is based on theories that systemic racism, sexism, oppression, and privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States and were created to maintain social, political, and economic inequities.”
“In order to teach a future educator how to teach in the classroom should be focused on techniques and how to deliver the message of science or whatever it is in the classroom, but some of the instances in here … it’s actually pretty shocking. It’s telling them how to be social justice warriors in the classroom,” Ingoglia said Thursday during the Appropriations Committee on Education meeting.
The committee approved the bill with Duval Democratic Sen. Tracie Davis voting against it.
Ingoglia pointed to two examples of what he objects to: Instruction in analyzing inequalities in education associated with ability, gender, language, race, and class; and in exploring bias incidents and hate crimes and methods of combating them.
“When we all sit back and we wonder how do we get to this place where you had an uprising of people pushing back against some of these teachings in schools, and a lot of people saying that didn’t exist, but the course curriculum, the syllabus themselves, prove that,” Ingogia said.
Opponents of the bill said it would censor what teachers in training can learn and criticized that it doesn’t define identity politics.
“Freedom is not real when the only viewpoints allowed in our public schools and colleges are those approved by state government. This bill’s vague language muzzles disfavored viewpoints in the name of so-called freedom,” said Joe Saunders, Equality Florida’s senior political director.
