It over-emphasizes slavery.

This is supposed to be a state that opposes Critical Race Theory theology, and the concerted effort to teach America’s children that they had the misfortune to be born into a racist nation, built on slavery without ever having properly atones, one that still conspires to elevate white citizens above all others employing all of its institutions to that end. Yet if the newly-minted Social Studies requirements for Florida’s public school students are to be taken seriously, and a genuine effort is to be made to meet them, Florida students won’t have time to learn much of anything about their nation’s history except slavery. With that kind of emphasis, who needs CRT or the 1619 Project’s distortions? A student won’t be able to graduate from high school without getting the message that the single most important feature of the United States and its history was slavery.

The full official curriculum is here.

Below, courtesy of The National Review, are all the curriculum requirements related to slavery. I recommend skimming: I have more to discuss after the astoundingly long list. No college course—heck, no three college courses—could competent cover what follows. How many teachers are qualified to present this material fairly, competently and thoroughly without distortion, misrepresentation and bias? A fair answer is “Few, if any, but nobody will be checking.”

What follows is literally unbelievable, and I mean literally literally. It contains the word “slave” 96 times, “slaves” 23 times, and “slavery” 45 times. Hold on to your skulls…

• Instruction includes what life was like for the earliest slaves and the emancipated in North America.
• Examine the Underground Railroad and how former slaves partnered with other free people and groups in assisting those escaping from slavery.
• Examine key figures and events in abolitionist movements.
• Instruction will include the Emancipation Proclamation, 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution of the United States.
• Examine the roles and contributions of significant African Americans during westward expansion (e.g., Benjamin “Pap” Singleton, James Beckwourth, Buffalo Soldiers, York [American explorer]).
• Examine the experiences and contributions of African Americans in early Florida.
• Instruction includes African American communities (e.g., Fort Mose, Angola Community, Black Seminoles, Fort Gadsden, Lincolnville, Eatonville).
• Understand the causes, courses and consequences of the slave trade in the colonies.
• Identify Afro-Eurasian trade routes and methods prior to the development of the Atlantic slave trade.
• Instruction includes how slavery was utilized in Asian, European and African cultures.
• Instruction includes the similarities and differences between serfdom and slavery.
• Describe the contact of European explorers with systematic slave trading in Africa.
• Instruction includes the comparative treatment of indentured servants of European and African extraction.
• Instruction includes the transition from an indentured to a slave-based economy.
• Describe the history and evolution of slave codes.
• Instruction includes judicial and legislative actions concerning slavery.
• Analyze slave revolts that happened in early colonial America and how political leaders reacted (e.g., 1712 revolt in New York City, Stono Rebellion [1739]).
• Examine the service and sacrifice of African patriots during the Revolutionary Era (e.g., Crispus Attucks, Peter Salem, James Armistead Lafayette, 1st Rhode Island Regiment).
• Analyze events that involved or affected Africans from the founding of the nation through Reconstruction.
• Explain early congressional actions regarding the institution of slavery (i.e., Northwest Ordinance of 1787, Three-Fifths Compromise, Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves of 1808).
• Explain the effect of the cotton industry on the expansion of slavery due to Eli Whitney’s Cotton Gin.
• Examine the various duties and trades performed by slaves (e.g., agricultural work, painting, carpentry, tailoring, domestic service, blacksmithing, transportation).
• Instruction includes how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.
• Instruction includes how collaboration of free blacks, whites, churches and organizations assisted in the Underground Railroad (e.g., Harriet Tubman, William Lambert, Levi Coffin, William Still).
• Identify political figures who strove to abolish the institution of slavery (e.g., Thaddeus Stevens, Abraham Lincoln, Zachariah Chandler).
• Evaluate various abolitionist movements that continuously pushed to end slavery.
• Instruction includes the Society of Friends (Quakers) and their efforts to end slavery throughout the United States.
• Instruction includes writings by Africans living in the United States and their effect on the abolitionist movement (e.g., Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, William Wells Brown, David Walker, Martin Delaney).
• Examine how the status of slaves, those who had escaped slavery and free blacks affected their contributions to the Civil War effort.
• Examine the causes, courses and consequences of the slave trade in the colonies from 1609-1776.
• Examine the condition of slavery as it existed in Africa, Asia, the Americas and Europe prior to 1619.
• Instruction includes how trading in slaves developed in African lands (e.g., Benin, Dahomey).
• Instruction includes the practice of the Barbary Pirates in kidnapping Europeans and selling them into slavery in Muslim countries (i.e., Muslim slave markets in North Africa, West Africa, Swahili Coast, Horn of Africa, Arabian Peninsula, Indian Ocean slave trade).
• Instruction includes how slavery was utilized in Asian cultures (e.g., Sumerian law code, Indian caste system).
• Instruction includes the similarities between serfdom and slavery and emergence of the term “slave” in the experience of Slavs.
• Instruction includes how slavery among indigenous peoples of the Americas was utilized prior to and after European colonization.
• Analyze the development of labor systems using indentured servitude contracts with English settlers and Africans early in Jamestown, Virginia.
• Instruction includes indentured servitude of poor English settlers and the extension of indentured servitude to the first Africans brought to Jamestown, Virginia by the Dutch in 1619.
• Instruction includes the impact of the increased demand for land in the colonies and the effects on the cost of labor resulting from the shift of indentured servitude to slavery.
• Instruction includes the shift in attitude toward Africans as Colonial America transitioned from indentured servitude to race-based, hereditary slavery (i.e., Anthony Johnson, John Casor).
• Instruction includes the Virginia Code Regarding Slaves and Servants (1705).
• Analyze the reciprocal roles of the Triangular Trade routes between Africa and the western hemisphere, Africa and Europe, and Europe and the western hemisphere.
• Instruction includes the Triangular Trade and how this three-tiered system encouraged the use of slavery.
• Instruction includes how the desire for knowledge of land cultivation and the rise in the production of tobacco and rice had a direct impact on the increased demand for slave labor and the importation of slaves into North America (i.e., the importation of Africans from the Rice Coast of Africa).
• Examine the development of slavery and describe the conditions for Africans during their passage to America.
• Instruction includes the Triangular Trade routes and the Middle Passage.
• Instruction includes the causes for the growth and development of slavery, primarily in the southern colonies.
• Instruction includes percentages of African diaspora within the New World colonies.
• Compare the living conditions of slaves in British North American colonies, the Caribbean, Central America and South America, including infant mortality rates.
• Instruction includes the harsh conditions and their consequences on British American plantations (e.g., undernourishment, climate conditions, infant and child mortality rates of the enslaved vs. the free).
• Instruction includes the harsh conditions in the Caribbean plantations (i.e., poor nutrition, rigorous labor, disease).
• Instruction includes how slavery was sustained in the Caribbean, Dutch Guiana and Brazil despite overwhelming death rates.
• Analyze the headright system in Jamestown, Virginia and other southern colonies.
• Instruction includes the concept of the headright system, including effects slave codes had on it.
• Instruction includes specific headright settlers (i.e., Anthony Johnson, Mary Johnson).
• Evaluate how conditions for Africans changed in colonial North America from 1619-1776.
• Instruction includes the history and development of slave codes in colonial North America including the John Punch case (1640).
• Instruction includes how slave codes resulted in an enslaved person becoming property with no rights.
• Evaluate efforts by groups to limit the expansion of race-based slavery in Colonial America.
• Examine different events in which Africans resisted slavery.
• Instruction includes the impact of revolts of the enslaved (e.g., the San Miguel de Gualdape Slave Rebellion [1526], the New York City Slave Uprising [1712]).
• Instruction includes how Spanish-controlled Florida attracted escaping slaves with the promise of freedom.
• Describe the contributions of Africans to society, science, poetry, politics, oratory, literature, music, dance, Christianity and exploration in the United States from 1776-1865.
• Instruction includes contributions of key figures and organizations (e.g., Prince Hall, Phillis Wheatley, Benjamin Banneker, Richard Allen, the Free African Society, Olaudah Equiano, Omar ibn Said, Cudjoe Lewis, Anna Jai Kingsley).
• Instruction includes the role of black churches (e.g., African Methodist Episcopal [AME]).
• Explain how slave codes were strengthened in response to Africans’ resistance to slavery.
• Instruction includes early laws that impacted slavery and resistance (i.e., Louisiana’s Code Noir [1724], Stono Rebellion in [1739], South Carolina slave code [1740], Igbo Landing Mass Suicide [1803]).
• Instruction includes foreign and domestic influences on the institution of slavery (i.e., Haitian Revolution [1791-1804], The Preliminary Declaration from the Constitution of Haiti [1805], German Coast Uprising [1811], Louisiana Revolt of [1811]).
• Instruction includes how African men, both enslaved and free, participated in the Continental Army (e.g., 1st Rhode Island Regiment, Haitian soldiers).
• Examine political actions of the Continental Congress regarding the practice of slavery.
• Instruction includes examples of how the members of the Continental Congress made attempts to end or limit slavery (e.g., the first draft of the Declaration of Independence that blamed King George III for sustaining the slave trade in the colonies, the calls of the Continental Congress for the end of involvement in the international slave trade, the Constitutional provision allowing for congressional action in 1808).
• Examine how federal and state laws shaped the lives and rights for enslaved and free Africans in the 18th and 19th centuries.
• Instruction includes how different states passed laws that gradually led to the abolition of slavery in northern states (e.g., gradual abolition laws: RI Statutes 1728, 1765 & 1775, PA 1779, MA & NH 1780s, CT & NJ 1784, NY 1799; states abolishing slavery: VT 1777).
• Instruction includes the Constitutional provision regarding fugitive persons.
• Instruction includes the ramifications of the Dred Scott v. Sandford decision.
• Analyze the provisions under the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution regarding slavery.
• Instruction includes how slavery increased through natural reproduction and the smuggling of human contraband, in spite of the desire of the Continental Congress to end the importation of slaves.
• Instruction includes the political issues regarding slavery that were addressed in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787.
• Instruction includes the Three-Fifths Compromise as an agreement between delegates from the northern and the southern states in the Continental Congress (1783) and taken up anew at the United States Constitutional Convention (1787) that required three-fifths of the slave population be counted for determining direct taxation and representation in the House of Representatives.
• Analyze the contributions of founding principles of liberty, justice and equality in the quest to end slavery.
• Instruction includes the principles found in historical documents (e.g., Declaration of Independence as approved by the Continental Congress in 1776, Chief Justice William Cushing’s notes regarding the Quock Walker case, Petition to the Massachusetts Legislature on January 13, 1777, Constitution of Massachusetts of 1780, Constitution of Kentucky of 1792, Northwest Ordinance of 1785, Northwest Ordinance of 1787, Southwest Ordinance of 1790, Petition from the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery of 1790, Petition of Free Blacks of Philadelphia 1800, United States Congress Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves of 1808).
• Instruction includes the contributions of key figures in the quest to end slavery as the nation was founded (e.g., Elizabeth “Mum Bett” Freeman, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, John Jay).
• Examine the range and variety of specialized roles performed by slaves.
• Instruction includes the trades of slaves (e.g., musicians, healers, blacksmiths, carpenters, shoemakers, weavers, tailors, sawyers, hostlers, silversmiths, cobblers, wheelwrights, wigmakers, milliners, painters, coopers).
• Instruction includes the variety of locations slaves worked (e.g., homes, farms, on board ships, shipbuilding industry).
• Explain how early abolitionist movements advocated for the civil rights of Africans in America.
• Instruction includes leading advocates and arguments for civil rights (e.g., John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Rush).
• Instruction includes the abolitionist and anti-slavery organizations (e.g., Pennsylvania Abolition Society [PAS], New York Manumission Society [NYMS], Free African Society [FAS], Maryland Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of Free Negroes and Others Unlawfully Held in Bondage, Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery).
• Evaluate the Abolitionist Movement and its leaders and how they contributed in different ways to eliminate slavery.
• Instruction includes different abolitionist leaders and how their approaches to abolition differed (e.g., William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, President Abraham Lincoln, Thaddeus Stevens, Sojourner Truth, Jonathan Walker, Albion Tourgée, Harriet Tubman, Harriet Beecher Stowe, William Wilberforce [United Kingdom], Vicente Guerrero [Mexico]).
• Instruction includes how Abraham Lincoln’s views on abolition evolved over time.
• Instruction includes the relationship between William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass and their respective approaches to abolition.
• Instruction includes the efforts in the creation of the 13th Amendment.
• Instruction includes different abolition groups and how they related to other causes (e.g., women’s suffrage, temperance movements).
• Instruction includes the efforts of the American Colonization Society towards the founding of Liberia and its relationship to the struggle to end slavery in the United States.
• Describe the impact The Society of Friends had on the abolition of slavery.
• Instruction includes the relationship between the Abolitionist Movement involving the Quakers in both England and the United States.
• Instruction includes how the use of pamphlets assisted the Quakers in their abolitionist efforts.
• Instruction includes key figures and actions made within the Quaker abolition efforts in North Carolina.
• Explain how the Underground Railroad and its conductors successfully relocated slaves to free states and Canada.
• Instruction includes the leaders of the Underground Railroad (e.g., Harriet Tubman, Gerrit Smith, Levi Coffin, John Rankin family, William Lambert, William Still).
• Instruction includes the methods of escape and the routes taken by the conductors of the Underground Railroad.
• Instruction includes how the South tried to prevent slaves from escaping and their efforts to end the Underground Railroad.
• Instruction includes how the Underground Railroad and the Abolitionist Movement assisted each other toward ending slavery.
• Explain how the rise of cash crops accelerated the growth of the domestic slave trade in the United States.
• Instruction includes how the demand for slave labor resulted in a large, forced migration.
• Instruction includes debates over the westward expansion of slavery (e.g., Louisiana Purchase, Missouri Compromise, Wilmot Proviso, Compromise of 1850, Kansas-Nebraska Act).
• Compare the actions of Nat Turner, John Brown and Frederick Douglass and the direct responses to their efforts to end slavery.
• Describe the effects produced by asylum offered to slaves by Spanish Florida.
• Instruction includes the significance of Fort Mose as the first free African community in the United States and the role it and the Seminole Tribe played in the Underground Railroad.
• Instruction includes the role of Florida and larger Gulf Coast region in the War of 1812 as the British offered liberation to slaves.
• Analyze the changing social and economic roles of African Americans during the Civil War and the Exodus of 1879.
• Instruction includes the status of slaves, escaped slaves, and free blacks during the Civil War.
• Instruction includes examining the roles and efforts of black nurses, soldiers, spies, scouts and slaves during the Civil War.
• Instruction includes the significant roles of African Americans in the armed forces (e.g., 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, 13th U.S. Colored Troops, Buffalo Soldiers, Sgt. William Carney, Pvt. Cathay Williams, Harriet Tubman).
• Instruction includes the establishment and efforts of the Freedman’s Bureau.
• Examine social contributions of African Americans post-Civil War.
• Instruction includes how the war effort helped propel civil rights for African Americans from the early Civil Rights Movement (1865-1896) to the modern-day Civil Rights Movement, demanding the American promise of justice, liberty and equality (i.e., 13th Amendment, 14th Amendment, 15th Amendment).
• Instruction includes the founding of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).
• Examine the importance of sacrifices, contributions and experiences of African Americans during wartime from the Spanish-American War through the Korean War.
• Instruction includes the contributions of African American soldiers during World War I. (e.g., 369th Infantry Regiment [Harlem Hellfighters], 370th Infantry Regiment, Sgt. Henry Johnson, Cpl. Freddie Stowers).
• Instruction includes the heroic actions displayed by the Tuskegee Airmen during World War II. (e.g., Gen. Charles McGee, Gen. Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., Gen. Daniel “Chappie” James, Capt. Roscoe C. Brown, 1st Lt. Lucius Theus, Charles Alfred “Chief” Anderson, James Polkinghorne).
• Instruction includes the contributions of African American women to World War I and World War II (e.g., 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion [Six Triple Eight], Lt. Col. Charity Edna Adams, Addie W. Hunton, Kathryn M. Johnson, Helen Curtis).
• Evaluate the relationship of various ethnic groups to African Americans’ access to rights, privileges and liberties in the United States.
• Instruction includes landmark United States Supreme Court Cases affecting African Americans (e.g., the Slaughter House cases, Yick Wo v. Hopkins, Plessy v. Ferguson).
• Instruction includes the influence of white and black political leaders who fought on behalf of African Americans in state and national legislatures and courts.
• Instruction includes how organizations, individuals, legislation and literature contributed to the movement for equal rights in the United States (e.g., Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, Carter G. Woodson, Henry Beard Delany, Emma Beard Delaney, Hiram Rhodes Revels).
• Instruction includes how whites who supported Reconstruction policies for freed blacks after the Civil War (white southerners being called scalawags and white northerners being called carpetbaggers) were targeted.
• Explain the struggles faced by African American women in the 19th century as it relates to issues of suffrage, business and access to education.
• Instruction includes the role of African American women in politics, business and education during the 19th century (e.g., Mary B. Talbert, Ida B. Wells, Sojourner Truth: Ain’t I a Woman?).
• Describe the emergence, growth, destruction and rebuilding of black communities during Reconstruction and beyond.
• Instruction includes the ramifications of prejudice, racism and stereotyping on individual freedoms (e.g., the Civil Rights Cases, Black Codes, Jim Crow Laws, lynchings, Columbian Exposition of 1893).
• Instruction includes acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans but is not limited to 1906 Atlanta Race Riot, 1919 Washington, D.C. Race Riot, 1920 Ocoee Massacre, 1921 Tulsa Massacre and the 1923 Rosewood Massacre.
• Instruction includes communities such as: Lincolnville (FL), Tullahassee (OK), Eatonville (FL).
• Examine economic developments of and for African Americans post-WWI, including the spending power and the development of black businesses and innovations.
• Instruction includes leaders who advocated differing economic viewpoints (e.g., Marcus Garvey, Booker T. Washington, Tuskegee Institute, W.E.B. DuBois, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People [NAACP]).
• Instruction includes the Double Duty Dollar Campaign as an economic movement to encourage community self-sufficiency.
• Instruction includes the impact of Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company.
• Instruction includes the contributions of black innovators, entrepreneurs and organizations to the development and growth of black businesses and innovations (e.g., National Negro Business League, National Urban League, Universal Negro Improvement Association [UNIA], NAACP, Annie Malone, Madame C.J. Walker, Negro Motorist Green Book, Charles Richard Patterson of C.R. Patterson & Sons, Suzanne Shank, Reginald F. Lewis).
• Examine political developments of and for African Americans in the post-WWI period.
• Instruction includes landmark court cases affecting African Americans.
• Instruction includes the ramifications of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal (1933-1945) on African Americans.
• Instruction includes the effects of the election of African Americans to national office (e.g., Oscar De Priest).
• Instruction includes the push and pull factors of the Great Migration. (e.g., race riots, socio-economic factors, political rights, how African Americans suffered infringement of rights through racial oppression, segregation, discrimination).
• Instruction includes how the transition from rural to urban led to opportunities and challenges. (e.g., Emmett J. Scott: Letters of Negro Migrants, Jacob Lawrence: The Migration of the Negro, red-lining, 1935 Harlem Race Riot, broad increase in economic competition).
• Describe the Harlem Renaissance and examine contributions from African American artists, musicians and writers and their lasting influence on American culture.
• Examine and analyze the impact and achievements of African American women in the fields of education, journalism, science, industry, the arts, and as writers and orators in the 20th century.
• Analyze the impact and contributions of African American role models as inventors, scientists, industrialist, educators, artists, athletes, politicians and physicians in the 19th and early 20th centuries and explain the significance of their work on American society.
• Explain how WWII was an impetus for the modern Civil Rights Movement.
• Instruction includes how WWII helped to break down the barriers of segregation (e.g., 1948 Executive Order 9981, Executive Order 8802 signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Tuskegee Airmen, “Double V” campaign, James G. Thompson).
• Examine key figures and events from Florida that affected African Americans.
• Instruction includes key events that occurred in Florida during the 19th century (e.g., Battle of Olustee).
• Instruction includes early examples of African American playwrights, novelists, poets, actors, politicians and merchants (e.g., Jonathan C. Gibbs, Josiah Walls, Robert Meacham, Blanche Armwood, Mary McLeod Bethune, Harry T. Moore, Harriet Moore, James Weldon Johnson).
• Instruction includes the settlements of forts, towns and communities by African Americans and its impact on the state of Florida post-Civil War (e.g., Fort Pickens, Eatonville, Lincolnville).
• Analyze economic, political, legal and social advancements of African Americans and their contributions and sacrifices to American life from 1954 to present, including factors that influenced them.
• Analyze the influences and contributions of African American musical pioneers.
• Instruction includes significant musical styles created and performed by African American musicians.
• Analyze the influence and contributions of African Americans to film.
• Instruction includes Oscar Micheaux’s films as an influential component of the modern- era Civil Rights Movement and future film industry (e.g., Lincoln Motion Picture Company, George P. Johnson, Noble Johnson, Spike Lee, Sidney Poitier, Melvin Van Peebles, Julie Dash, William Packer, Hattie McDaniel).
• Examine the importance of sacrifices, contributions and experiences of African Americans during military service from 1954 to present.
• Analyze the course, consequence and influence of the modern Civil Rights Movement.
• Instruction includes the early Civil Rights Movement (1865-1896) to the modern-era Civil Rights Movement and define the modern-era Civil Rights Movement as an economic, social and political movement from 1945 to 1968 (e.g., speeches, legislation, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis).
• Instruction includes the events that led to the writing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
• Instruction includes the March on Washington and its influence on public policy.
• Compare differing organizational approaches to achieving equality in America.
• Instruction includes the immediate and lasting effects of modern civil rights organizations (e.g., The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People [NAACP], Congress of Racial Equality [CORE], Southern Christian Leadership Conference [SCLC], Student Non- Violent Coordinating Committee [SNCC], Black Panther Party [BPP], Highlander Folk School, religious institutions).
• Instruction includes different methods used by coalitions (i.e., freedom rides, wade-ins, sit-ins, boycotts, protests, marches, voter registration drives, media relations).
• Examine organizational approaches to resisting equality in America.
• Instruction includes the immediate and lasting effects of organizations that sought to resist achieving American equality (e.g., state legislatures, Ku Klux Klan [KKK], White Citizens’ Councils [WCC], law enforcement agencies, elected officials such as the “Pork Chop Gang,” private school consortiums, Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission [MSSC]).
• Instruction includes different methods used by coalitions (e.g., white primaries, acts of violence, unjust laws such as poll taxes, literacy tests, sundown laws, anti-miscegenation laws).
• Instruction includes commentary on just and unjust laws (e.g., Letter from Birmingham Jail, I Have a Dream Speech, Chief Justice Earl Warren’s ruling opinion on Loving v. Virginia, commentary of Senator Everett Dirksen).
• Explain the struggles and successes for access to equal educational opportunities for African Americans.
• Instruction includes how African Americans were impacted by the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision that overturned Plessy v. Ferguson.
• Instruction includes Ruby Bridges, James Meredith, Little Rock Nine, 1971 Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education and 1978 Regents of the University of California v. Bakke.
• Instruction includes the evolution of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) to include land grant status and liberal arts studies.
• Instruction includes local court cases impacting equal educational opportunities for African Americans.
• Analyze the contributions of African Americans to the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).
• Examine the key people who helped shape modern civil rights movement (e.g., Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Claudette Colvin, Rosa Parks, Stokely Carmichael, Fannie Lou Hamer, Freedom Riders, A. Philip Randolph, Malcolm X, Justice Thurgood Marshall, Mamie Till Mobley, Diane Nash, Coretta Scott King, John Lewis, Medgar Evers).
• Instruction includes local individuals in civil rights movements.
• Identify key legislation and the politicians and political figures who advanced American equality and representative democracy.
• Instruction includes political figures who shaped the modern Civil Rights efforts (e.g., Arthur Allen Fletcher, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, President John F. Kennedy, President Lyndon B. Johnson, President Richard Nixon, Senator Everett Dirksen, Mary McLeod Bethune, Shelby Steele, Thomas Sowell, Representative John Lewis).
• Instruction includes key legislation (i.e., Civil Rights Act of 1957, 1960, 1964, 1967 and 1972 Title VII, Voting Rights Act of 1965).
• Analyze the role of famous African Americans who contributed to the visual and performing arts (e.g., Florida Highwaymen, Marian Anderson, Alvin Ailey, Misty Copeland).
• Analyze economic, political, legal and social experiences of African Americans and their contributions and sacrifices to American life from 1960 to present.
• Instruction includes the use of statistical census data between 1960 to present, comparing African American participation in higher education, voting, poverty rates, income, family structure, incarceration rates and number of public servants.
• Instruction includes the Great Society’s influence on the African American experience.
• Instruction includes but is not limited to African American pioneers in their field (e.g., President Barack Obama, Vice President Kamala Harris, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, Justice Clarence Thomas, Representative Shirley Chisholm, Arthur Ashe, Ronald McNair).
• Examine key events and persons related to society, economics and politics in Florida as they influenced African American experiences.
• Instruction includes events and figures relating to society, economics and politics in Florida (e.g., Florida Supreme Court Justice Joseph W. Hatchet, Florida Supreme Court Justice Peggy A. Quince, Gwen Cherry, Carrie Meek, Joe Lang Kershaw, Arnett E. Girardeau, Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, A. Philip Randolph, Tallahassee Bus Boycott of 1956, Ax Handle Saturday, St. Augustine summer of 1964).
• Instruction includes the integration of the University of Florida.
• Instruction should include local people, organizations, historic sites, cemeteries and events.

I know quite a bit about slavery myself, and its influence on American politics, history and culture. The school system I graduated from in Arlington, Massachusetts was regarded at the time as one of the better ones in the state, indeed the nation, and I spent the 6th through the 12th grade in only “academically advanced” classes. Yet I encountered very little of what is on Florida’s list, and there still wasn’t time to cover many, many crucial topics. The volume of required teaching about slavery listed above is insane—excessive, impossible, unrealistic, unnecessary, and craven: Florida, despite all of the grandstanding by DeSantis, is capitulating to the woke indoctrination mob.

The negative publicity surrounding the curriculum, however, has all settled on one single requirement: “Instruction includes how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.” This has been translated by the “Get DeSantis!” hoard as “Teach kids that slavery wasn’t all bad.” Here’s Kamala Harris Kamala delivering a rant at the Ritz Theatre and Museum in the historically Black neighborhood of LaVilla before an audience of civil rights leaders, educators, community members and elected officials:

Come on — adults know what slavery really involved. It involved rape. It involved torture. It involved taking a baby from their mother. It involved some of the worst examples of depriving people of humanity in our world. How is it that anyone could suggest that in the midst of these atrocities, that there was any benefit to being subjected to this level of dehumanization?

In a earlier appearance at a convention for the traditionally Black sorority Delta Sigma Theta Inc., she said,

“Just yesterday in the state of Florida, they decided middle school students will be taught that enslaved people benefited from slavery. They insult us in an attempt to gaslight us, and we will not stand for it.”

You can’t blame Kamala this time: Florida, Republicans , conservatives, Republicans and DeSantis walked right into that, chins exposed. Don’t expect me to defend them. The “useful skills” part of the curriculum is superfluous, unnecessary, and the equivalent of a “Kick me!” sign. Sure Harris and other critics are misrepresenting it, but they shouldn’t have had the chance. It’s a dumb requirement, and it does smell of equivocation and the “Hitler did some good things too!” mindset.

It is the whole of the curriculum, however, that is most significant, and equally indefensible.