Board of education replaces course at 12 public universities with own US history curriculum, in latest ‘anti-woke’ attack

Educators are warning that college enrollment in Florida will plummet after the state removed sociology as a core class from campuses in the latest round of Ron DeSantis’s war on “woke ideology”.

The Republican governor’s hand-picked board of education voted on Wednesday to replace the established course on the principles of sociology at its 12 public universities with its own US history curriculum, incorporating an “historically accurate account of America’s founding [and] the horrors of slavery”.

The board faced a backlash last summer for requiring public schools to teach that forced labor was beneficial to enslaved Black people because it taught them useful skills.

The removal as a required core course of sociology classes, which Florida education commissioner and staunch DeSantis acolyte Manny Díaz insisted without evidence had “been hijacked by leftwing activists”, follows several other recent “anti-woke” moves in education in Florida.

  • FordBeeblebrox@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Gonna be real fun when pilots from FL decide they’re gonna let Jesus take the wheel. Maybe better than MCAS 🤷‍♂️

    What the fuck Florida?

  • milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee
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    5 months ago

    Just makes me think of Tom Lehrer’s song.

    “They confuse all their clients
    By calling it, ‘science,’
    Although it’s only sociology!”

    Perhaps the Bored* of Education are just mathematical satirists.

    *[sic?]

  • BradleyUffner@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Every school in Florida losing their accreditation over this would be a dream come true! Come on Ronny boy, sink that ship!

  • /home/pineapplelover@lemm.ee
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    5 months ago

    Although the general education classes like psychology and sociology are annoying, they’re all essential knowledge for being an educated human being. It’s a shame Florida wants their population to be ignorant conservatives.

    • spider@lemmy.nz
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      5 months ago

      ignorant conservatives

      If you’re referring to today’s definition of “conservative”, then that’s redundant.

      • Evkob@lemmy.ca
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        5 months ago

        When was conservatism not ignorant? Certainly not in my lifetime. It’s been an ideology of anti-intellectualism for at least three decades now.

          • otp@sh.itjust.works
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            5 months ago

            I feel like Conservatism USED to be “How can we save money and prepare for a better financial future as a country/state/etc.?”…

            It kind of moved along the lines of “How can we stop financially supporting things and people that are different to us?”

            Now, the financial part is just an excuse.

            • spider@lemmy.nz
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              5 months ago

              Now, the financial part is just an excuse.

              Indeed, and they have no problem pissing away taxpayer dollars for migrant flights, lawsuits, etc.

            • grue@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              I feel like Conservatism USED to be “How can we save money and prepare for a better financial future as a country/state/etc.?”…

              No, that’s always been nothing more than a lie conservatives tell to try to excuse their abhorrent policies.

              What conservatism really used to be was defending the monarchy, and it still is. I was going to say “…and the only thing that’s changed is that they no longer try to use ‘divine right’ as a justification and prefer a different title for the autocrat in charge,” but nope!

              • Every conservative I know I have tricked into defending the British at the Boston Massacre and at the Boston Tea Party. Just don’t drop the name of the event and they will go nuts. Kids throwing snowballs at police? No wonder they got shot, they asked for it. Adults breaking into private property and destroying it, that’s not a protest that’s a riot!

        • cygnus@lemmy.ca
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          5 months ago

          It’s been an ideology of anti-intellectualism for at least three decades now.

          30 years is maybe pushi… Oh wait, that’s only 1994. Yeah, you’re right.

    • Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      classes like psychology and sociology are annoying

      It’s a bummer that you had that experience. Mine were absolutely fascinating. That said, my school had some flagship social science departments, so the people that instructed there were not the b-team.

      If a university doesn’t have a good program in a particular discipline, good people don’t want to work there, and the current staff often don’t have the expertise to hire for it.

      • /home/pineapplelover@lemm.ee
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        5 months ago

        They’re alright classes. I enjoyed the professors I had but I feel like the majority of people want to speed through the GEs and get going on their actual major classes.

          • /home/pineapplelover@lemm.ee
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            5 months ago

            I remember writing a research paper on roe v wade not to long ago. Thought it would be an easy paper that’s kind of socially acceptable and not at all controversial. Found out that conservatives do wild shit like kill doctors and harass rape victims. I hate society.

      • grue@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        The quality of an overall department and the quality of classes taken by non-majors to fulfill degree requirements are two different things. For example, my university has a great architecture school, but that didn’t stop the “history of industrial design” class I took to fulfill my art requirement (as an engineering major) from being mostly an exercise in memorizing pictures of chairs.

        • Bakkoda@sh.itjust.works
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          5 months ago

          English comp at RIT back when it was trimesters. I’ll never understand. Not a technical writing class or shutting that could really benefit a tech heavy student base. English comp freshman year. Miserable.

          • 🐍🩶🐢@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            Thankfully I transferred in and didn’t have to take miserable English courses by a tech focused University. The technical writing course I had to take at RIT was easy mode. The guy gave us all of the homework for the entire quarter on the first day and as long as it was all turned in before then, that was ok. It was a required class that I personally did not need due to my previous education and I don’t think I spent more than a few hours total to get an A.

            • Bakkoda@sh.itjust.works
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              5 months ago

              Yeah i desperately needed a technical writing course at that age. I was a hot mess. I most certainly didn’t need an English comp class where i was actually required to turn in one of those awful black and white composition pads at the end to pass. I hard noped and took it the next trimester with a bunch of upper class kids who needed it and it was a walk in the park.

              • 🐍🩶🐢@lemmy.world
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                5 months ago

                It was a shame that a lot of classes at RIT could be really hit or miss depending on the professor. I graduated before they went to semesters, and you had no time to be sick, lost, or behind. I tried to sign up for an extra class every quarter so I could have the option to withdraw from one of them and still be full time. Knowing when to withdraw, especially not waiting until the last minute, was a lesson I wished I knew that first year I was there.

                Technical writing is very much not the same as general English composition, and I always hated it when schools lump it together. To this day I still work with people who don’t even know where to start. Having a bunch of robotics engineers balk at having to write documentation about their own designs blew my mind. It wasn’t even the manuals, just general design and functional specifications. Less than 10 pages, half of them pictures. I was nice and made the skeleton for them with some notes on what information I needed in which sections. Hopefully, they learned from it.

        • Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          Did your university have a good industrial design or product design department? Industrial design is very very different than architecture. (I went to school for industrial design and instructed university courses in the department)

          • grue@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            It appears to be ranked in the top 10 in the lists I checked, so yes.

            • Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              Interesting. Bummer that you got a shit class. Mine GE history glass was pretty good, and it got into the different design movements, what drove them, and how they impacted industrialization, usability, accessibility, and other elements of contemporary life.

    • spacesatan@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      Sociology maybe, I don’t know about the intro to psychology experience of ‘hey check out all these famous theories, paradigms, and experiments. At least half of which are largely disproven or under serious doubt but we wont say which.’

      • Jiggle_Physics@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Depends on the school and professor I guess. My intro to psych class made it clear how much older paradigms are, basically, just flights of fancy, however there is a foundation of moving towards a system of discovery and diagnoses that was important, instead of literally super natural explanations. With new stuff they went over how difficult it is to create solid proofs and the reasons why. They also would do what they could to make sure we understood why they came to the conclusions they did and the short comings of those reasons and practices.

        • spacesatan@lemm.ee
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          5 months ago

          Yeah much better, ‘hey check out a half century of our field producing mostly bullshit, this is a good use of your time.’

          My point being if you can’t put together a full 1 term curriculum of “here are the fundamentals of our field that we are sure or 99% sure about” then maybe its not a productive use of time to require every single college student spend a class on it.

          If you want a history of science class then have a history of science class.

          • Jiggle_Physics@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            Well I am sorry that you see no value in understanding how the thing you are studying came to be. However, the majority of people do. Literally every subject I learned did this.

            • spacesatan@lemm.ee
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              5 months ago

              I don’t remember chemistry 101 being 70% about alchemy and phlogiston. This is almost exclusively a phenomenon with intro psychology classes.

              If you want to study it fine whatever but there’s no reason it should be a standard GE requirement instead of something like philosophy of science.

              • Jiggle_Physics@lemmy.world
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                5 months ago

                You went to a very different school than I did. We absolutely learned about the development of chemistry in introductory courses. Same with mathematics, physics, etc. This even included getting into how they co-developed. There was a deeper dive into in the liberal arts because it’s it is more important, as they are less mechanical, but STEM definitely got into the basic history of the subject.

        • braxy29@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          i would add to this that early conceptualizations of psychology have had massive cultural impacts. if you enjoy art, film, literature from the last century and change, it’s worth knowing about Freud and Jung.

          their ideas represent an evolution of thinking about people, their minds, their relationships to others and to their environment or to god, but they also underpin so much we take for granted at present in popular culture and day-to-day conversation (at least in “the west”).

          • Jiggle_Physics@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            Yes, didn’t want a wall of text explaining all the context the course provided about the different times and now. The roots of it are clearly what we would now consider quackery. However the simple foundational idea that there is something identifiable, explainable, and maybe curable was revolutionary. This was in a time when explanations ran from miasma to demonic possession. So it is worth knowing about for the historical perspective, I totally agree. I was just more sorta shocked there are professors still telling people that our scientific body is the ultimate facts on the matter.

    • kromem@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      It’s a shame Florida wants their population to be ignorant conservatives.

      Look at the entrance polls for the Republican primaries.

      There’s a 30 point spread between Trump’s support depending if the person went to college or not.

      How much is correlation vs cause and effect is debatable, but certainly in a democracy an educated public can’t hurt.

    • KoalaUnknown@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      classes like psychology and sociology are annoying

      Sociology was my favorite general ED class outside of my discipline. I’m sure it varies by teacher but it can be really fun and interesting!

  • rusticus@lemm.ee
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    5 months ago

    “the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them.”

    For those wondering, this is the definition of “woke” by Rhonda Sandtits lead counsel.

    Being “anti-woke” is a dog whistle for racism, sexism, xenophobia and bigotry.

    • laughterlaughter@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Good argument, but in my opinion (and it’s just like, my opinion, man), calling him Rhonda Sandtits is weird if you’re pro-trans (or at least anti-anti-trans.)

  • Optional@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Can we stop pretending we’re shocked? Please? Not in a resigned way, not like we’re just gonna let this new garbage happen. But let’s stop pretending Florida and Texas are normal. Like, at all.

    And by “us” of course I’m referring to the corporate news media. Seriously, stop building up fascism. Kthx.

    • FordBeeblebrox@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      They fucking STOLE a whole presidential election (hence the projection from orange and co) and we’re supposed to treat them like a member of the Union? Texas thinks chili has no beans and wants to secede?

      Bye Felicia

      • laughterlaughter@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        I’ll say this as many times as necessary: No. Texas will remain in the Union, period. It’s in the Constitution. Texas belongs to us. If Texans don’t want to play by the rules, then yes, “bye, felicia” and fucking leave the U.S. But we get to keep Texas the land.

        • FordBeeblebrox@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          Oh Uncle Sam has a lot of shit parked in Texas. All the big guys with “everything’s bigger” belt buckles can mosey on down to old Mexico, we’ll keep the highways and runways. Maybe connect it to the rest of the power grid

  • Tukma@lemmy.cafe
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    5 months ago

    Upset for badly losing the primary honey? Apparently “anti-woke” equals to “ignorant” for DeSantis.

  • ME5SENGER_24@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    DeSantis has to be a marketing major. The dude is the ultimate panderer. He understands the people of his state and shifts every movement towards their appeasement. All except the state’s populace. He understands the county count for votes and says to himself fuck the cities and the people in favor of the rednecks and MAGA-otts.

    Anti-communism warnings to the Cubans and Venezuelans and you win the south. Pro-KKK and you win the north. Some Werther’s caramels and you win the center.

    Before you think it, I don’t think he’s a good person. I think he’s an absolute shithead. I just applaud the stupidity of where my parents live.

    (Fun fact, I had sane parents….until they moved to Florida, now we barely on speaking terms)

    • Everythingispenguins@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Nope he has a B.A. in history from Yale and a J.D. from Harvard. Plus some time as a J.A.G.

      I might have too rethink 'Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it."

      • tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip
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        5 months ago

        Amazing how just a handful of the richest assholes can astroturf their way to whatever they want, given just a few decades. You’d think it’d take more than that to control one of the world’s richest countries.

  • raynethackery@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Could this result in accreditation being pulled, which could make federal student financial assistance unavailable?

      • Riccosuave@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        That’s literally the definition of indoctrination, which is ironic considering that is what they are purportedly trying to prevent.

        The irony being that they want to make sure students in Florida aren’t indoctrinated with facts supported by evidence because that is fucking woke.

        • spider@lemmy.nz
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          5 months ago

          That’s literally the definition of indoctrination, which is ironic considering that is what they are purportedly trying to prevent.

          And, of course, they’re doing the same thing with “freedom”.

          • Riccosuave@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            Oh no, I understand just fine. They are rigging the system to create an entire generation if ignorant wage slave voters regardless of whether they have the means to attain higher education or not. This in turn creates a cycle that is incredibly hard to break, and that has far reaching repercussions on the electorate for years to come.