The Florida College Board is accusing the state’s Department of Education of “slander” after initially agreeing to revise the controversial high school Advanced Placement (AP) course for African American Studies, asserting that it was slanderous for the department to assert that the woke course “lacks educational value.”
“We deeply regret not immediately denouncing the Florida Department of Education’s slander, magnified by the DeSantis administration’s subsequent comments, that African American Studies ‘lacks educational value,’” the Board said in a statement weeks after agreeing to revise the woke course, which included sections on reparations, “queer theory,” and “intersectionality.”
The College Board continued, contending that its “failure to raise our voice betrayed Black scholars everywhere and those who have long toiled to build this remarkable field.”
“There is always debate about the content of a new AP course. That is good and healthy; these courses matter,” the Board said. “But the dialogue surrounding AP African American Studies has moved from healthy debate to misinformation.”
The Board’s statement of regret comes weeks after the department rejected the course over concerns that it was infused with woke ideology. At the time, the 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.”
A brief look at the course’s syllabus showed sections on “the Black Feminist Movement, Womanism, and Intersectionality”; “Black Power”; “Black Pride”; and “Black Queer Studies,” the latter of which “explores the concept of the queer of color critique, grounded in Black feminism and intersectionality, as a Black studies lens that shifts sexuality studies toward racial analysis.”
As Breitbart News detailed:
Additionally, the course delves into topics including cultural appropriation, reparations, and “afrofuturism.”
Another section of the syllabus shows a focus on the “Movements for Black Lives” which, in part, explores the “origins, mission, and global influence of the Black Lives Matter movement.”
The document also provides a section on student expectations of the course and cites “several” students who take issue with reading material written by white authors in the context of African American history.
“We are glad the College Board has recognized that the originally submitted course curriculum is problematic, and we are encouraged to see the College Board express a willingness to amend,” FDOE communications director Alex Lanfranconi said in a statement.
“AP courses are standardized nationwide, and as a result of Florida’s strong stance against identity politics and indoctrination, students across the country will consequentially have access to an historically accurate, unbiased course,” he added.
DeSantis also defended the department’s rejection of the initial course.
“Now who would say that an important part of black history is queer theory? That is somebody pushing an agenda on our kids. … When you try to use black history to shoehorn in queer theory, you are clearly trying to use that for political purposes,” he explained:
We want to do history, and that’s what our standards for black history are. It’s just cut and dried history. You learn all the basics. You learn about the great figures … I view it as American history. I don’t view it as separate history. You know, we have history a lot of different shapes and sizes, people that have participated to make the country great, people that have stood up when it wasn’t easy and they all deserve to be taught, but abolishing prisons being taught to high school kids as if that’s somehow a fact? No. That’s not appropriate.
While the Board revised the course, it is now asserting that it is absurd for the administration to take this as a legitimate political victory.
“In Florida’s effort to engineer a political win, they have claimed credit for the specific changes we made to the official framework,” the Board said.
“Florida is attempting to claim a political victory by taking credit retroactively for changes we ourselves made but that they never suggested to us,” it added.
In a February 9 letter, the Board also claimed that it never received feedback about how the course violates Florida law.
“Finally, we need to clarify that no topics were removed because they lacked educational value. We believe all the topics listed in your letter have substantial educational value,” it added.