Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has reportedly rejected a high school Advance Placement course for African American studies.
A letter earlier this month from Florida Department of Education’s Office of Articulation told the College Board that the AP course is “inexplicably contrary to Florida law and significantly lacks educational value.”
“In the future, should College Board be willing to come back to the table with lawful, historically accurate content, FDOE will always be willing to reopen the discussion,” the letter said.
DeSantis spokesman Bryan Griffin further told CNN the course “leaves large, ambiguous gaps that can be filled with additional ideological material, which we will not allow.”
“As the Department of Education has previously stated, if the College Board amends the course to comply, provides a full course curriculum, and incorporates historically accurate content, then the Department will reconsider the course for approval,” Griffin added.
The College Board declined to comment on the decision and only said that it looks “forward to bringing this rich and inspiring exploration of African-American history and culture to students across the country.”
“Like all new AP courses, AP African American Studies is undergoing a rigorous, multi-year pilot phase, collecting feedback from teachers, students, scholars and policymakers,” the statement said. “The process of piloting and revising course frameworks is a standard part of any new AP course, and frameworks often change significantly as a result. We will publicly release the updated course framework when it is completed and well before this class is widely available in American high schools.
The governor’s rejection of the plan follows his “Stop Woke Act,” which aims to ban Critical Race Theory (CRT) in the state’s public schools.
“It’s also based on false history when they try to look back and denigrate the Founding Fathers, denigrate the American Revolution, doing all these different things that even very liberal historians say is not supported by the facts,” the governor said during a press conference in Pensacola in May.
DeSantis also signed a bill that restricts what schools can say about race when teaching children. He also helped pass a bill that bars teachers from discussing sexuality with children as young as five, what the left improperly dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill.
Lisa Hill, the history department chair at Hamden Hall Country Day School in Connecticut, told CNN that the class does not have a political agenda.
“I must tell you, for sure, we don’t have a political agenda,” Hill said. “It is not a course of indoctrination. My philosophy of education is you learn and discuss and debate so you get a better understanding of what’s presented to you.”
“We teach facts,” she added. “We’re not delving into theory.”
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