DeSantis calls it a ‘hoax,’ but Florida’s obsession with sanitizing books is real — and scary | Opinion

Gov. Ron DeSantis’ response to reports of books being removed at Florida schools has been to call book bans a “hoax.”

Nothing to see here, he tells Floridians.

Sure, we’re not seeing piles of books being burned outside school board chambers. Florida’s tactics are more insidious. They hide under the guise of “age appropriateness” or a purported fight against “indoctrination.”

When the Department of Education rejected dozens of social studies books this week and approved others after publishers agreed to change them, a DeSantis spokesman credited the state on Twitter for catching and fixing “political indoctrination of children through the K-12 public education system.”

Once you peek behind Florida’s smoke screen, the truth is uglier than the governor makes it seem. It’s also more complicated, thanks to Florida’s web of laws restricting instruction and dictating how schools approve books.

So let’s keep it simple:

This is the state that warned librarians to “err on the side of caution” when choosing books, or risk being charged with a third-degree felony for exposing kids to materials that run afoul of vague laws on what’s appropriate. It’s also the state where inappropriate or sexual material is more times than not flagged in books by LGBTQ and Black authors, held up by conservative activists as examples of perversion in our schools.

Florida is the state that bans teachers from discussing sexual orientation or gender identity in all grades and limits how they can talk about race. It’s got a Legislature that made it more onerous for districts to approve and review books. Where schools preemptively asked teachers to remove books from their classrooms until they conducted that review process.

Let’s keep in mind that this year the Florida Legislature passed a bill that allows any person in a county to challenge a book and force a district to pull it out of circulation until it goes through a review. If a parent disagrees with a district’s ruling on that challenge, they can appeal to the governor-appointed commissioner of education, who will most likely be all ears. No wonder a parent convinced a North Florida district to remove a novel about school segregation called “Little Rock Nine” — based on real events in U.S. history — from elementary schools even though it is at a third-grade reading level.

Who needs book burnings when fear creates its own chilling effect? Who needs government censors when you have groups like Moms for Liberty skimming books to look for any hint of sexual content, no matter its literary value and appropriateness for upper grades, content that makes white people uncomfortable or so-called leftist indoctrination?

Social studies books

When the state is the one directly rejecting books, the public only gets a glimpse of what that process looks like.

Of the 101 social studies textbooks submitted to the Department of Education for use in classrooms, 82 were initially rejected. The agency’s cryptic explanation was: “due to inaccurate material, errors and other information that was not aligned with Florida Law.” The most current tally shows 66 books were approved, but it’s unclear exactly if and what changes took place.

The DOE only released five examples of textbook changes. One of them was the removal of a question about social justice in the Hebrew Bible. Another was the deletion of a description of how the death of George Floyd and videos of police violence have increased calls for social justice and inspired the Black Lives Matter movement. The excerpt didn’t condone BLM. It even mentioned that critics labeled the movement anti-police and blamed it for acts of violence.

For a state that values, in the words of Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr., “historical facts” that are and “free from inaccuracies or ideological rhetoric,” it seems only some historical facts are deemed worthy. Ignored are facts that defy a narrative that America has freed itself from racism. Any mention of systemic racism or the persistence of injustice in spite of progress is framed as anti-American.

Whether state regulators like it or not, the movement for social justice exists. But it’s unlikely that K-12 will learn its nuances, pros and cons. The Department of Education told publishers not to submit books containing the topic along with others that have been blacklisted: culturally responsive teaching, social-emotional learning and critical race theory.

Florida last year rejected, of all things, math textbooks last year for having “prohibited topics.” A Herald analysis found that only three of 125 textbook reviewers — all three affiliated with a conservative Christian college in Michigan or Moms for Liberty — flagged content that violated a state ban on critical race theory.

The real hoax appears to be the fallacy that books are corrupting children. The reality is that Florida’s state government is playing games with the public. Behind the morality facade lies a political class determined to quash free thinking.