Florida Schools Civics Training for Teachers Will Include Importance of Religion in the Public Square

Teachers in Florida will now learn some lessons in American history as they train to teach civics in the state, including the importance of religion in the public square. The new training course includes facts missing from many history books, including that the Establishment Clause of the Constitution only prohibits the government from establishing a national religion or having policies that favor one religion over the other.

“We’re unabashedly promoting civics and history that is accurate and that is not trying to push an ideological agenda,” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said at an event last week.

Critics, including the left-wing Washington Post, say the DeSantis administration is pushing “Christian dogma,” even if the Founding Fathers made clear the Judeo-Christian foundation of the United States and its founding documents.

The Freedom Forum Institute wrote:

The establishment clause separates church from state, but not religion from politics or public life. Individual citizens are free to bring their religious convictions into the public arena. But the government is prohibited from favoring one religious view over another or even favoring religion over non-religion.

But the Post reported that according to some people who attended the training, the civic lessons “cherry-picked” certain statements “to present a more conservative view of American history.”

The Post reported:

In Florida, [DeSantis] said, students are “learning the real history, you’re learning the real facts.” DeSantis has signed into law new civics curriculum standards, introduced last year for middle-schoolers, which met with little opposition from teachers, who say they are comprehensive and apolitical.

The training sessions, first reported by the Miami Herald, began last month and will continue through July for teachers who volunteer to take them. While not mandated by the state, they come with a $700 stipend for three-day sessions, with a chance to earn a $3,000 bonus and a “Civics Seal of Endorsement.”

Anna Fusco, president of the Broward Teachers Union, said she’s glad the state isn’t mandating the training, but that many teachers are signing up to get the stipends. She said union members who attended the training sessions said they were being told to present to students “only one side of history.”

Civics teacher Abe Lopez, who teaches in Central Florida, supports DeSantis’s emphasis on civics and the way the governor thinks the subject should be taught. Lopez spoke at an event last week where improved civics assessment scores among middle school students were announced, according to the Post.

“I used this opportunity as a blank slate to help my students understand that their rights are intrinsic and do not come from a man, they do not come from a government. Our rights come from a creator,” Lopez said in the speech. “And once you acknowledge that your rights come from a creator, they can’t be taken away by a man or a government.”

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