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.
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.
ignorant conservatives
If you’re referring to today’s definition of “conservative”, that’s redundant.
When was conservatism not ignorant? Certainly not in my lifetime. It’s been an ideology of anti-intellectualism for at least three decades now.
True, but now it’s off the rails.
Edit:
Margaret Goldwater advocated for birth control and reproductive rights in the United States during the twentieth century. Goldwater was a socialite and philanthropist and was married to Barry Goldwater, US Senator from Arizona. She spent much of her life working to further the women’s reproductive rights movement, which sought to expand women’s legal, social, and physical access to reproductive healthcare, including contraception and abortions.
Barry Goldwater was considered the father of the modern conservative movement; his wife’s work would likely result in his excommunication from today’s Republican Party.
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
financiallysupporting things and people that are different to us?”Now, the financial part is just an excuse.
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. A mob breaking into private property and destroying commercial goods? That’s not a protest that’s a riot, someone should have put the dogs down!
The word you’re looking for is “Reagan”.
Now, the financial part is just an excuse.
It’s just lip service; they’re quick to waste taxpayer dollars on lawsuits, migrant flights to blue states, etc.
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.
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.
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.
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)
It appears to be ranked in the top 10 in the lists I checked, so yes.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Besides for my intro to philosophy course I don’t think I got much out of my GEs.
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.
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.
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!
Yeah I really enjoyed how society thinks and behave. Still, I wouldn’t major in it.
Sociology sure, 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.’
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.
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”).
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.
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 pseudoscience class then have a history of pseudoscience class.
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.
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, international relations, genocide studies, etc.
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.
Don’t worry, not just the old ones are pseudoscientific
You know the one thing I will say out of all this, is that if Republicans find sociology so threatening, it as a field must be doing something right.
I left college ages ago, but my sociology course is the one I remember most. I took it as a throwaway elective, but it ended up being my most loved course. The things we learned are applicable to everyday life, and articles like this show how even to this day, it’s still paying dividends.
I don’t like that phrase because republicans can also use it. “If they’re so afraid of our book bans, we must be doing something right!”
A better way of saying it is, if Republicans find sociology threatening, then they know what they’re doing, and that’s dangerous.
Could this result in accreditation being pulled, which could make federal student financial assistance unavailable?
If it doesn’t, it should.
Well, as a sociology teacher working with psychologists in my current research I get why they decide this.
Politicians like them can’t rule over people even slighty aware of how political discourse and mass manipulation operate.
The medium is the massage. ;)
Baudrillard? Just found out it was this guy.
Yup. I’ve always loved that he liked the error on his book title so much, he kept it. And the book is pretty good as well.
:)
I mean, the psychology and sociology fields have been manipulated by those wanting to push their own beliefs through pseudoscientific bibles like the DSM, and through non-reproducable studies- probably around 1/3 psychology and sociology studies. Not to mention rampant P-hacking
This can’t be true, can it? I know that ads are manipulating me, but that doesn’t magically make it stop working. I’d I never see a gay couple or a black person, no amount of reading will suddenly make it more “normal” to me when I do see them.
You underestimate your own brain
That’s some inception ish.
I really don’t understand what you’re trying to say.
I’ve never seen two conjoined twins in my life. But if I ever get to bump into one, I’m not going to act differently. Surprised? Sure, but not like “WOW WTF!!!” and pointing at them, laughing at them, asking them stupid questions, etc.
Do you know why? Because I am educated. And I’m assuming you are too.
Try getting out more. Maybe go to a Pride event. You’ll meet awesome people and assholes, but you’ll also gain respect and empathy for people who are marginalized. It can be scary to go into unknown worlds, but discovery is practically a human instinct.
Nobody is going to respect any kind of degree from these universities.
Why would you pay to go to school where your credentials will mean Jack shit to anyone?
What a joke.
One wonders what will happen to these schools’ accreditations, really.
I mean, if you’re teaching something you call history and you don’t teach students how to put the course content in its historical context and interrogate those sources critically, you’re not teaching them history, you’re indoctrinating them.
…tho to be fair, that’s honestly what passes for US History in most US schools. The more history I learn, the more I realize most of us aren’t taught
I mean if you’ve been following the news on university leadership, I don’t think Florida universities are the only ones in trouble
I mean, people paid to attend trump ‘university’. There are always plenty of fools who will buy stupid shit. I kind of feel sorry for the students though. Most people are pretty young at university age and many are still forming their perspectives. Getting away from home and meeting new people is an important part of this. Plenty of people from conservative families go away to uni and start to see that they’ve been brought up on bullshit. This is an attempt to stop that from happening - the ‘anti-woke’ shit will attract more conservative students which will reduce the chance that any of them will encounter different views and cultures so they stay in their ignorance bubble. Don’t want little Johnny or Jane coming home from school an anarchist! It’s sad for the students though who will come away in massive debt with a useless degree and have less opportunity for healthy change.
Brain drain on a state-level.
Only if you go to a conservative Christian institution or workplaces, which is not many I can imagine.
they do mention it’s 12 public universities
Right, because they’re the only ones that the state of Florida has control over.
I’m not going to look it up to confirm, but I would guess that’s all of their state universities.
That’s what Derpsantis wants, a state full of workers that have no choice but to fall into the labor and low rung office pool.
The elite DON"T want normal kids getting degrees, because then they compete (successfully) with their ignorant as shit trustfund crotchfruit.
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.
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
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.
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
So in 10 years I’m gonna start asking job applicants where they went to high school… and I won’t hire Floridians, because I know they are uneducated.
Why wait?
I cannot think of a reason 😅 sorry Florida, your spawn isn’t qualified.
This is a joke right?
Definitely not.
There are terrible highschools all around the US. Someone taking AP classes in Florida still will have learnt more than someone taking only general classes and passing with C’s and D’s outside of Florida. Be realistic.
Until those AP classes get banned. It’s just a matter of time before the Bible is the only book in Florida.
“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.
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.)
It’s also confusing. I thought it was his wife or something.
I am so sad it isn’t.
Every Florida college ought to immediately lose its accreditation because of this.
It’s interesting how conservatives are using the power of the state to mold the population to their liking.
It’s
interestingterrifying how conservatives are using the power of the state to mold the population to their liking.FTFY
Do… do they understand that sociology is at best tangentially connected to socialism?
Probably not.
The word sounds vaguely scary and that is sufficient.
That would require knowing what sociology is
Obviously not.
Can you blame them? They did attend schools in Florida afterall.
@MicroWave
Remember when #Republicans were all about “the less government in your life, the better”?They used to say things like “the government that governs least, governs best” and “You can’t legislate morality.”
Now they want to decide what books you can read & which bathroom you can use.
Everything they say is a lie to forward their goal of unopposable power and they aren’t very far from it.
We need to stop pretending that the words that come out of their mouths and hands have any meaning other than as a weapon.
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)
It is wild how polorized American politics have become. There’s no way it’s natural is it?
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.
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."
Florida seriously losing its luster these days. Used to visit the state for vacations. Can’t imagine spending a dime there anymore.
Don’t worry it’ll be under water sooner or later.
Florida says that’s fake news
/s
no it’s OK, didn’t you hear? it’s illegal to talk about that in Florida. it’s all fine again! Ron just made the climate change illegal! it has to be fake now, because it’s illegal for it to be real!
Every school in Florida losing their accreditation over this would be a dream come true! Come on Ronny boy, sink that ship!
makes me feel bad for kids who can’t afford out of state tuition, tho
