To Live In Ignorance

I am beginning to think that those who travel to Florida to live or play are either living in ignorance or engaged in some sort of massive cognitive dissonance. How else to explain the fact that it is is the fastest-growing state in the Union, despite the existential threats it faces through climate change? And the reactionary political climate cultivated by its governor, DeSantis, is characterized by repression, censorship and thought control, surely a threat to all who value critical thought and freedom.

Given the recent warnings about travel to The Sunshine State, it becomes apparent that people both inside and outside the state need to educate themselves about the dangers posed by reactionary lawmakers. The movie clip below from Inherit The Wind might be a good place to start:

Psst! Got Any Extra Kerosene?

 I know of a state that would gladly accept your contribution.

And should presidential-hopeful DeSantis secure the high office, expect conflagrations throughout The 'Union' that will rival their worst wildfires.

Freedom To Think? Not In Florida

 

Some may think I spend too much time these days writing about the Benighted United States of America. Perhaps I do, but its seemingly inexorable slide into ignorance and autocracy is surely something that needs to be monitored and fought against. The latter, of course is not my battle directly, but any movement that works to restrict access to information that all democratic countries need to make wise choices should face universal condemnation.

While many states qualify for such censure, Florida seems to be the leading poster-state in this regard. Governor Ron DeSantis, using his "anti-woke' rhetoric to garner votes from the ignorant and stupid, seems to be leading the charge against good citizenship in general, and education in particular by ensuring that people are kept in the dark about that country's dark, racist past and present.

 I have been doing considerable study in the past few months of Black American history. A National Geographic documentary, Rise Again: Tulsa and The Red Summer, informed me of things I had no idea of. While many have heard of the Tulsa Race Massacre, I would imagine many (and I was one of them) have no idea of the number of massacres that preceded Tulsa. The full documentary is now available on YouTube, and I place it at the end of this post.

The above, and anything else that would result in an informed populace is now anathema in Florida. The redoubtable TizzyEnt explains:

For those who believe in being well-informed, here is the Tulsa video which I hope you get a chance to view at some point.

As well, allow me to make one more recommendation. Reconstruction: The Accident of Race and Color is a book that taught me things I had no idea of regarding the history of race in the U.S., including the fact that in the antebellum South, there were places such as Charleston and New Orleans that had mixed-race communities with thriving, prosperous and essentially integrated communities. It was, in fact, the Reconstruction Era that robbed them of those conditions and rights that they had long enjoyed.

It is this kind of knowledge that DeSantis and his ilk are working very hard to suppress.

Caught Without A Figleaf

While I have been retired from teaching for quite a number of years, every so often I am reminded of the often counter-productive influence that parents can exert over the learning experience. I'll get to what prompted my latest revisitation of the past in a moment, but first, a couple of contextual memories.

One year, when teaching Grade Nine, I was given a note from a parent who objected to her child being taught about Greek myths. They were, apparently, counter to their religion, the parent apparently under the misapprehension that I was somehow promoting false gods. I offered an alternative course of study for the student while the rest of the class pursued the subject, but I never heard another word from the parent, so all proceeded as before.

Another time, a parent phoned me objecting to his daughter reading Flowers for Algernon, which contained a very, very circumspect allusion to sexual activity. This was part of an independent study of novels which came with a very extensive reading list. The parent informed me that such a book should not be made available to any student, and I told him that while he was well within his parental rights to exercise influence over what his daughter read, no one had the right to dictate what others could or could read. End of discussion, and his daughter (an excellent student, by the way) chose another book.

In the intervening years, thanks to feckless administrators who choose political expediency over principles, Canadian parents have gained much more power over what schools teach, but the problem seems to be particularly acute in backward states such as Florida, where the governor (and likely presidential nominee aspirant) Ron DeSantis has made it his mission to restrict the things students there can learn, all under the figleaf of combatting 'the woke agenda.' As he said last year after his second gubernatorial victory, "Florida is where woke goes to die."

It apparently also is the place where art appreciation is an endangered course of study, given its 'wokeness'.

Ah, the Renaissance. A period that saw the growth of intellectual reason, the flowering of art and culture, and a lot of very hardcore pornography.

Such is the opinion of aggrieved parents of kids at Tallahassee classical school in Florida, anyway. Their sixth-graders (who are aged around 11-12) were shown a picture of Michelangelo’s sculpture of David during a Renaissance art class. Fairly normal, one might think – particularly for a school that advertises itself as providing a classical education. Nope: a firing offence. One parent called the sculpture “pornographic” and so much outrage ensued that the principal of the school, Hope Carrasquilla, was forced out.

The 'sin' of Ms. Carrasquilla and her staff, apparently, was a failure to send out a parental letter 'warning' that their  kids were about to be exposed to an exposed statue, which set off three parents:

 According to Slate, who interviewed Barney Bishop III, the school board chair responsible for forcing Carrasquilla out of her job, three parents were behind the bulk of the David-related outrage. Three parents. Three! But the number of angry parents doesn’t matter, because, according to Bishop, parents are always right. “Parental rights are supreme, and that means protecting the interests of all parents, whether it’s one, 10, 20 or 50,” Bishop said to the Tallahassee Democrat.

Shockingly, the board chair has little confidence in teachers' professional judgement:

“The rights of parents, that trumps the rights of kids,” he told Slate. “Teachers are the experts? Teachers have all the knowledge? Are you kidding me? I know lots of teachers that are very good, but to suggest they are the authorities, you’re on better drugs than me.”

While most of the world will likely be amused by the retrograde thinking in Florida, its implications are much wider, as I have recently posted about. The threat to critical thinking is very real:

it’s just the latest example of a terrifying lurch towards censorship and authoritarianism in Florida. Governor Ron DeSantis, who has been described as the “Education Governor” is on a censorship crusade and his first major battleground has been schools. DeSantis wants to completely reshape K-12 and higher education in the state and, so far, he’s been getting his way. Florida’s Republican-dominated legislature has already passed a number of laws limiting how gender, sexuality and race can be taught. Now the state is trying to limit sex education with a draft law that would ban schools teaching about menstrual cycles before the sixth grade. Give it a few years and showing a child a picture of Michelangelo’s David will be a criminal offence, punishable by firing squad.

Knowledge is power. The growing authoritarian impulse in the United States in general, and Florida in particular, makes it clear that education has become weaponized to maximize the chances that those in power stay in power, while the disenfranchised remain where they have always been: at the bottom of the social and political hierarchy.