This Fall, Florida Students Will Be Forced to Take "Anti-Communist" Classes

[Ranting Randy]

Source: truthout.org

Florida public schools will force students to take a Heritage Foundation-backed class on the “evils of communism.”

Beginning in the fall of 2026, all Florida middle and high school students will be required to take a yearly social studies class on the history of communism.




Read more: https://truthout.org/articles/this-fall-florida-students-will-be-forced-to-take-anti-communist-classes/

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Is this what freedumb looks like?

[Skittles]

1. the evils of CAPITALISM and AUTHORITARIANISM would be more relevant to them

[mwb970]

2. I have complete confidence that the kids will ignore all the crap they spew.

[Puppyjive]

3. The Heritage Foundation is communist

Project 2025 is a pretty good example of communism. Horrendous organization.

[ancianita]

5. You're joking, right? You think a neo-fascist org like the Heritage Foundation is communist? Seriously?

If so, you must not know what communism is.

Maybe read something.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Heritage_Foundation

[ancianita]

4. To be fair, though, Florida also requires that students pass a Florida Civic Literacy Exam (FCLE), which covers

the U.S. Constitution, founding documents, and landmark Supreme Court cases.

Students enrolled in a high school U.S. Government course must take the FCLE. Students must achieve a 60% or higher (48 out of 80 questions) to pass.

tudents entering a Florida College System or State University System institution in 2021-22 or later must pass the FCLE to meet the civic literacy competency requirement.

Passing the FCLE in high school fulfills the requirement, exempting them from retaking it in college.

The test includes questions on the U.S. Constitution, American democracy, and founding documents.

[Frasier Balzov]

7. Enslaved people were counted as three-fifths of a person.

They probably skip over the three-fifths compromise in the Constitution.

[ancianita]

8. I hear you, though the real problem at the time was to get the U.S. Constitution ratified by a majority of states.

Yes, there was compromise. That said...

The Constitution has not been perfect, but other nations' constitutions (roughly 100) are still modeled after ours. Countries that have adopted structures or principles from the U.S. Constitution include Japan, Chile, the Philippines, Brazil, Argentina, and many in Latin America.
Elements Adopted: Common elements inspired by the U.S. model include a written constitution, a presidential system, federalism, and the concept of judicial review.

Only recently have many used the Canadian Constitution as their model.

[cmmngrnd]

10. FL public school grad -- 3/5 compromise not skipped over

That was along time ago, though!

You can find all the standards here. Standard SS.8.A.3.10: "Examine the course and consequences of the Constitutional Convention (e.g., New Jersey Plan, Virginia Plan, Great Compromise, Three-Fifths Compromise, compromises regarding taxation and slave trade, Electoral College, state vs. federal power, empowering a president). "

So 3/5 compromise is part of the current state standard.

[Frasier Balzov]

12. I admit my surprise and my error!

[cmmngrnd]

6. We had to take "Americansim vs Communism" in FL during the 70's

It was a BS course and taught like a BS course by coaches and other staff that had to have a class to teach. The text was old and had pictures of shiny new American factories and cars (this was before Japan kicked our butts) and grainy photos of scarf-wearing babushkas working in fields next to WW2 era tractors. It was classic Cold War propaganda. The fact that we were destroying the environment, or plundering third world resources abroad, or lynching black folk at home somehow never came up.

If you want to see what the course outcomes are supposed to be, go to the Florida Board of Education standards page, select Social Studies, then Grade 912, then History of Communism. The topics range from anodyne to clearly propaganda worthy of the cold war era.

The bottom line is this is yet another case of republicans solving problems that don't exist. They really don't know how to govern, because they don't want to govern. They want to rule. To govern you need to solve real problems. To rule you need to create boogeyman problems to justify the extra-constitutional powers you claim to need to protect the people from the boogeyman. The boogeyman in this case is "the resurgence of communist ideologies across the United States and throughout the world." Seriously! That's news to me, and probably to you, but you can read it here. And in solving this particular boogeyman, they get to re-tell the mythical story of a mythical American past where everything was wonderful.

Preaching to the choir: Don't take my criticism of America and the propaganda wrong. America has always had the best ideals, and I cherish those ideals. But we all know we've never lived up to those ideals, and certainly didn't during some mythic past. My criticisms in this post are for the America that is, with the hope that we can someday move to the America that could be.

[ancianita]

9. What a weird course title. It would be more accurately labeled Capitalism vs Communism, both being economic ideologies.

Thanks for your well stated post.

I'm with Biden, who repeatedly said that America is an idea.

[FakeNoose]

11. It might be useful if they teach it along with other systems like socialism, democracy, totalitarianism, and anarchy

You know, stuff that used to be taught in high school CIVICS classes.

[IbogaProject]

13. Hopefully it will be as sucessful as Abstince focused sex ed

It was easier to bad mouth socialism during the 1950s economic boom with broad increases in many family's standards of living. Now people might read Marx and get ideas. I studied economics and Marx had the problems identified well but I suspect his banking heir partner Eingels pushed in the "armed conflect is inevetible" part. Just an idea I have, which isn't researched beyond one semester of Marxian Economics.

[reACTIONary]

14. The syllabus definitely should include....

..... Duck and Cover. They could even incorporate that into PE.

[JohnnyRingo]

15. Textbook written by Joe McCarthy

With a forward penned by Ronald Reagan. ...and make sure the brats pay for them. This ain't a govt handout.

[eppur_se_muova]

16. Almost fifty years ago, I had to take "Comparative Political Systems" to graduate high school in FL.

And yes, it compared Soviet Communism and American capitalism, in fairly unsophisticated ways.

I'm not sure how new these "new" requirements are, except it says "yearly" -- as in every student, every year ??

[cstanleytech]

17. It should be a comprehensive class on uncontrolled capitalism as well but it won't.