Rebutting the hysteria over Florida bills on children’s education
Rebutting the hysteria over Florida bills on children’s education
R epublican legislators in Florida have introduced a pair of parental-rights-in-education bills that create greater curriculum transparency and allow parents to review and object to age-inappropriate content. Naturally, Democrats and the media are outraged. President Biden condemned the legislation as “hateful” in a tweet. Chasten Buttigieg, the husband of U.S. transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg, tweeted at Florida governor Ron DeSantis that the proposed legislation “will kill kids.” Buttigieg claims that LGBTQ youth “won’t be able to talk to their teachers” and “will be pushed back into the closet” if the bills become law.
The media have amplified his baseless claims. Axios Tampa Bay proclaimed in a headline, “Queerness in the Classroom under Siege.” Its report concluded that the bills “could act as bans on LGBTQ+ discussions and materials.” Axios, ABC News, the Washington Post, NBC News, and other news outlets echoed gay activists’ misleading use of the term “Don’t Say Gay bill” to describe SB1834. The Miami Herald published an opinion piece labeling SB1834 “pure evil,” describing it as part of DeSantis’s “fascist agenda.” Tampa Bay’s NBC affiliate covered local protests against the bills using the chyron, “Protests against anti-LGBT Bills.”
Slate used a headline branding DeSantis “The New Face of ‘No Promo Homo’ Laws,” while opining that the bills “draw on a long history of homophobic legislation that portrays queer identities as hypersexualized and perverted.” Seventeen magazine ran an article instructing its readers on how to oppose the bills.
In fact, neither SB1834 nor SB1300 mentions the words gay or homosexual. SB1834 has just one line that’s caused the uproar: “A school district may not encourage classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity in primary grade levels or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students.”
SB1300, which builds on an existing state law passed in 2021, requires schools to make instructional materials available for public review and establishes a process to handle complaints regarding educational materials that are age-inappropriate or “pornographic or prohibited under s.847.012.” (S.847.012 prevents adults from selling or giving minors “depiction(s) that include nudity, sexual excitement, sexual battery, bestiality or sadomasochistic abuse.”)
The bills also deal with school board members’ pay and other procedures regarding children’s well-being. Even the woke Tampa Bay Times admitted that SB1834 acknowledges “concerns that some LGBTQ youth might face abusive situations at home” by including “a section that would permit schools to withhold information from parents ‘if a reasonably prudent person would believe that disclosure would result in abuse, abandonment, or neglect.’”
As the parent of twelve- and 14-year-old boys who live in Florida, I welcome legislative efforts to give parents more say in what our children are taught. At a recent high-school open house near my home in St. Petersburg, I noticed a pair of young-adult books about transgender youth and other woke titles prominently displayed at the entrance to the school library. I followed up with the school principal to inquire why such books were being promoted and to find out if they were required reading at the school.
I got a vague reply indicating that all books came from an “approved vendor” and were approved “by the county.” After noticing another prominent display of woke children’s books on our public libraries’ audiobook app, I learned that the titles come from a group called Florida Teens Read (FTR), which admits on its website that “the content of some of (our recommended) titles may be more mature than younger students may have previously encountered.”
A look at some of FTR’s 15 recommended books, chosen by a committee of 14 high-school librarians, provides a snapshot of the national tug-of-war between parents and schools and reveals why many parents aren’t content to blindly trust educators. The Black Flamingo, a “teacher’s pick” for K–8 readers on Amazon, is about a mixed-race gay teen that’s described as “a fierce coming-of-age novel about identity and the power of drag.” Date Me Bryson Keller is advertised as “a heartfelt boy meets boy romance.”
Not so Pure and Simple by Lamar Giles “confronts toxic masculinity and explores the complexity of what it means to be a ‘real man.’” Co-authored by critical race theory exponent Ibram Kendi, Stamped: Racism, Antiracism and You is a “field guide to American racism . . . that reveals how deeply embedded racism is in the very fabric of the U.S.” And Tiffany Jackson’s Grown is described as a “searing examination of misogynoir, rape culture, and the vulnerability of young black girls.”
Liberals expect conservatives to quietly acquiesce as they push progressive talking points disguised as literature in our schools. But imagine if schools featured books promoting the pro-life agenda or other conservative causes. It’s difficult for parents to evaluate how woke a school’s curriculum is, and so I’m glad Florida Republicans are prioritizing transparency in education. Parents who want their children to be force-fed left-wing dogma will still be able to find schools that fill that bill. But for those of us who want our children to receive a classically liberal education without the liberal indoctrination, more transparency and common-sense legislation will help us find schools that still teach students how to think, not what to think.