How the Big Lie Ended Up in a Sixth-Grade Classroom in Florida

Today’s lesson is how the Big Lie made it onto a world history study sheet handed out by a substitute teacher in the sixth grade at the R. Dan Nolan Middle School in Bradenton, Florida, on Wednesday.

It was a take-home sheet headed “How Does a Historian Work?” and it was meant to prepare students for a test on Thursday. One mother proceeded to quiz her child on its list of vocabulary words. The first six were evidence, source, primary source, secondary source, reliable source, and point of view.

“Then came No. 7,” the mother, who asked not to be named, later told The Daily Beast.

The seventh word was bias and the mother was shocked by what accompanied it.

The media is often biased and will add words that persuade you to think one way or another. Read these two statements made by reporters after the 2020 election.

President Trump made claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

President Trump made false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

The first sentence is just giving you information, while the second leads you to believe he is wrong before you have all the facts.

Never mind that the whole world has all the facts and what the second statement leads you to believe is the truth. And, in failing to acknowledge that former President Donald Trump’s claims have been proved false, the first statement might lead you to imagine that his claims might have merit.

“It’s actually the most biased example of bias I’ve seen,” the mother later said. “It seems pretty out of place for a sixth-grade class.”

She was sure there might have been any number of other examples that would not have brought politics into the classroom. She showed the study sheet to her husband.

“He read it and went, ‘What is going on?’” she recalled.

They showed it to a neighbor who is a lawyer. He had much the same reaction.

“We’re laughing, but it’s not funny,” the mother said.

Her sixth grader responded as a sixth grader might, not understanding the danger of the Big Lie.

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“He said, ‘Oh, don’t worry about it, you’re making a big deal out of it,’” she remembered.

She responded as an aware mother of a sixth grader, telling him he was too young to be fed political propaganda. She was one of a number of parents who called the school. She says the principal promised to look in it.

One parent texted a copy of the study sheet to several friends. It reached Ron Filipkowski, a former Florida defense attorney who uses social media to call out radical right-wingers. He tweeted the section of the sheet that has the Big Lie.

One father subsequently released an anonymous statement through an intermediary.

“I am very unhappy that the teacher would choose such a controversial example in an assignment supposedly teaching bias in a world history class. There are so many other examples that could have been used. And the way this question is phrased would lead a student to believe that the media was incorrect in their assessment that the president’s claims were false.”

He went on, “And I would also add it is inappropriate to be using this example at a time when Trump is STILL disputing the results of the 2020 election two years later and demanding a do over!"

The school board subsequently released a statement of its own.

“The School District of Manatee County is committed to adhering to the curriculum and instructional standards set forth by the Florida Department of Education and Florida Statutes,” it began.

The board attached a copy of the study sheet, adding that it was “based on chapter one of the following state-approved textbook: Discovering Our Past: A History of the World, Early Ages, Florida edition, by McGraw Hill.” The board should have noted that the book makes no mention of Trump nor the election he continues to claim was stolen but was in fact not.

The board only said: “This homework assignment does not meet the expectations of the School District of Manatee County. A thorough review of future homework lessons in this course is taking place and remaining issues related to this assignment will be addressed.”

The board ended by saying, ”Our students deserve the very best education we can provide in accordance with the curriculum and instructional standards set forth by the State of Florida.”

The problem in Florida is that the curriculum and instructional standards are increasingly influenced by Gov. Ron DeSantis. He announced in May that the state Department of Education had rejected 41 percent of the proposed math textbooks as too woke.

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“It seems that some publishers attempted to slap a coat of paint on an old house built on the foundation of Common Core, and indoctrinating concepts like race essentialism, especially, bizarrely, for elementary school students,” DeSantis said, “I’m grateful that Commissioner Corcoran and his team at the department have conducted such a thorough vetting of these textbooks to ensure they comply with the law.”

Florida Commissioner of Education Richard Corcoran did not fail to suck up to his boss.

“Florida has become a national leader in education under the vision and leadership of Governor DeSantis,” he said. “When it comes to education, other states continue to follow Florida’s lead as we continue to reinforce parents’ rights by focusing on providing their children with a world-class education without the fear of indoctrination or exposure to dangerous and divisive concepts in our classrooms.”

Meanwhile, DeSantis is so fixated on positioning himself for the 2024 election that he has continued to avoid taking a clear position on whether the 2020 election was stolen. He has been actively campaigning for such GOP champions of the Big Lie as would-be Pennsylvania governor Doug Mastriano and Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake.

The combined effect of all those who perpetuate the falsehood is that it filters down even into a sixth-grade study sheet back in DeSantis’ home state. The mother of the sixth grader who was shocked by the bias section is well aware that DeSantis has been railing against what he says is left-wing “indoctrination” in the state’s public schools. And now here was what could well be called right-wing teaching.

“It’s like, indoctrinating who?” the mother told The Daily Beast.

She told her child that whatever the teacher or Trump or anybody else might say, the simple truth is that the 2020 election was not stolen.

“I said, ‘This is a fact,” she recalled.

That was on Wednesday. The mother awaited the results of Thursday’s test on the material in the study sheet.

“I’m interested if he had to use his own example of bias,” she told The Daily Beast. “And if they had to use Trump to get extra points.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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