Florida REJECTS 41% of Math Textbooks for Attempting to ‘Indoctrinate Students’

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has been a vocal critic of so-called critical race theory and other efforts to inject progressive politics into grade-school classrooms.

Along with other conservative governors, he has pushed an agenda meant to reject any such textbooks and lesson plans.

The state’s Department of Education recently weighed in on the matter with a similarly tough stance against liberal indoctrination.

According to a press release on Friday:

Today, Commissioner of Education Richard Corcoran approved Florida’s initial adoption list for mathematics instructional materials properly aligned to Florida’s Benchmarks for Excellent Student Thinking (B.E.S.T.) Standards. The approved list followed a thorough review of submissions at the Department, which found 41 percent of the submitted textbooks were impermissible with either Florida’s new standards or contained prohibited topics – the most in Florida’s history. Reasons for rejecting textbooks included references to Critical Race Theory (CRT), inclusions of Common Core, and the unsolicited addition of Social Emotional Learning (SEL) in mathematics.

While plenty of Floridians oppose the effort, many conservatives expressed their support.

Leftists angry they got caught sneaking Marxist critical theory into student math books. Florida bans 28 math textbooks from school in fight over CRT https://t.co/J88XRzoc7B via @MailOnline

— Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) April 17, 2022

Likewise, the state declining to purchase certain textbooks isn't "banning" them. if you want to teach your kid Woke Math, where "2+2=4" is white supremacy, you're free to buy any CRT math textbook you want. You just cannot force Florida taxpayers to subsidize this indoctrination

— Christina Pushaw 🐊 🇺🇸 (@ChristinaPushaw) April 18, 2022

Florida is rejecting more than 40% of math textbooks for containing “prohibited topics” like references to critical race theory. @LeoFeldmanNEWS shared details on Monday's "National Report." pic.twitter.com/YnOajfvnlw

— NEWSMAX (@NEWSMAX) April 18, 2022

DeSantis, who has spoken out against critical race theory in the past, defended his administration’s decision to reject dozens of public school textbooks.

As Politico reported:

Asked on Monday what a critical race theory math lesson could look like, DeSantis said “there’s a number of reasons” the state turned down the textbook proposals aside from that issue. The majority of rejected textbooks were for kindergarten through fifth grade.

DeSantis noted that Florida recently approved new teaching standards attempting to root out traces of “Common Core” in the state curriculum. DeSantis has made education and parental rights a major priority since his election in 2018,most recently pushing the Republican-led state Legislature to approve a measure to prohibit teaching critical race theory and backing another, dubbed “Don’t Say Gay” by opponents, that bans educators from leading classroom lessons on gender identity and sexual orientation for students in kindergarten through third grade.

Here’s a clip of the governor’s remarks:

Math is about getting the right answer, not about feelings or ideologies.

In Florida, we will be educating our children, not indoctrinating them. pic.twitter.com/BmhBXEljYM

— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) April 18, 2022

Do you support the DeSantis administration’s opposition to leftist indoctrination in public schools?