DEATH SENTENCE Wants to Groom Your Children the Tikvah Hillsdale College Way: The Dracula Jesus Destroy American Education Summer Tour is On!
David Shasha
DeSantis will tour Florida to tout conservative school board candidates
By: Zac Anderson
First he issued endorsements.
Then Gov. Ron DeSantis began spending his own campaign money to help preferred down ballot candidates.
Now DeSantis is going even further with a statewide "education tour" in advance of the Aug. 23 primary to tout candidates he endorsed in school board races. The tour will go through Sarasota, Ormond Beach, Jacksonville and Miami.
Combined, DeSantis' actions are much further than past Florida governors have gone to put their imprint on local politics.
School board races are technically nonpartisan, but DeSantis is weighing in to try and elect conservatives. The races often are decided in the primary.
DeSantis is proving he is all in on trying to reshape Florida's education system, which has been a major focus of his time in office. He signed controversial bills that limit how race, gender and sexual orientation are discussed in schools.
Some school districts have resisted DeSantis' education agenda, with the governor battling local school boards over policies such as mask mandates. Now he wants to install school board candidates who share his views.
The governor endorsed 30 candidates for school board seats around Florida, donating $1,000 from his political committee to many of the candidates and spending his campaign money on mailers supporting them. Now DeSantis will campaign for many of the candidates in person in advance of the primary.
The Republican Party of Sarasota County sent out an email Friday with an invitation to a 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. event on Aug. 21 at Sarasota's Sahib Shrine Event Center. The invitation states that the event is part of the "DeSantis Education Agenda Tour."
The Volusia County GOP also shared an invitation Friday for a "DeSantis Education Agenda Tour" rally on Aug. 21 from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. at a Harley Davidson dealer in Ormond Beach.
DeSantis campaign sent out an email Monday saying there also will be tour stops in Duval and Miami-Dade counties.
"These pro-parent, pro-student local school board candidates are committed to the DeSantis Education Agenda," DeSantis said in a press release about the tour. "Parental rights, curriculum transparency, and classrooms free of woke ideology are all on the ballot this election, and it starts with school board elections. Florida’s school boards need members who will defend our students and stand up for parental rights and will ensure Florida’s children are protected from woke ideology in their classrooms. I am proud to stand by each of them.”
The governor has endorsed school board candidates in Sarasota, Duval, Miami-Dade, Hillsborough, Manatee, Lee, Alachua, Pasco, Polk, Flagler, Indian River, Volusia, Martin, Brevard, Putnam, Hendry and Monroe counties.
"Governor DeSantis is rallying support for the DeSantis Education Agenda — the students first, parents’ rights plan for Florida — which all our local candidates support," the Sarasota GOP said in an email announcing the governor's rally.
DeSantis has endorsed three conservative Sarasota County School Board candidates in a contest that has become increasingly acrimonious and exemplifies the charged politics around education nationwide.
Conservatives have targeted school district's COVID-19 policies, and how schools approach race and gender identity issues, and made them a central aspect of the GOP's pitch in recent years. Emotionally-charged school board meetings have spilled over into emotionally-charged campaigns for school board seats.
In Sarasota County, trucks are driving around with billboards calling a candidate who used to work for Planned Parenthood a "baby killer." Postcards went out calling three candidates endorsed by the local Democratic Party "BLM... ANTIFA RIOTERS" who "WANT GROOMING AND PORNOGRAPHY IN OUR SCHOOLS."
From The Tallahassee Democrat, August 16, 2022
DeSantis and the Mis-Education of Florida’s Schoolchildren. With Test for Extra Credit.
By: Diane Roberts
Well, is they? It don’t look good, what with government schools forcing them to become communists, hate America, and vote wrong.
But never fear: Florida’s governor’s fixed that mess with new rules stopping those union-loving, Toni Morrison-reading, evolution-accepting, comfortable shoe-wearing, foreign movie-watching, gay-coddling teachers indoctrinating our precious babies into wokery.
Ron DeSantis wants the young ’uns educated with no unfair criticism of the Greatest Country that Ever Was. To that end, he’s bringing in a curriculum from Hillsdale College, a righteous institution where they love the Lord, the flag, and capitalism — not necessarily in that order.
Teachers are the problem. As Hillsdale president Dr. Larry Arnn says, they’re “trained in the dumbest part of the dumbest colleges in the country.”
If teachers were smart, they’d have majored in business and made real money instead of going into a loser profession that pays, what, 58K max?
But like a lot of so-called “progressives,” they’re into “ideals.” They want to talk about “tolerance” and “caring” and “inequality” when they should be making sure that boys don’t go into the girls’ restroom which, as everybody knows, will destroy civilization.
Librarians aren’t helping: Pornographic material such as “Maus” (shows breasts), “Are You There, God? It’s Me Margaret” (bras, menstruation), “Slaughterhouse Five” (profanity, lack of patriotism) and the “Complete Works of William Shakespeare” (teen sex, paganism, cross-dressing) sit openly on the shelves of school libraries waiting to corrupt impressionable 16-year-olds.
History lessons
Ron DeSantis, Larry Arnn, and Moms For Liberty will ensure our children study how Christopher Columbus discovered Miami, the Pilgrims fled religious oppression by the Sheriff of Nottingham, and the Indians gave those Pilgrims the best land, then cooked turkey dinners for them. Sure, a bunch of Indians got killed when we wanted some more land, but it was their own fault for not inventing guns.
Then, during the Revolution, Americans like Mel Gibson rebelled against the evil King George the Three because they didn’t want to pay taxes and wear wigs.
As for slavery, it’s over. Calm down, libs. Yes, the Founding Fathers owned some, but they loved those slaves like family! Mount Vernon overseers only whipped slaves over really bad behavior, like when Charlotte, a seamstress, was “impudent.” George Washington said whipping her with a hickory switch was “very proper.” Otherwise, the slaves had lots of outdoor fun in the cotton fields and sang a lot.
Children should also learn that the Father of Our Country was really hurt when 17 of his slaves ran away and joined the Redcoats during the Revolutionary War.
Just because the British freed them.
There’ll be a test
So, for all you God-fearing, teacher-hamstringing, decent opposite-gender parents out there, here’s the kind of patriotic curriculum Ron DeSantis and Hillsdale will soon be bringing to a home room near you.
Third Grade Social Studies Discussion Questions:
- Why does God like America best?
- Why are Chloe’s two dads going to hell?
- Should girls be allowed to vote?
Sixth Grade Civil Rights History Discussion Questions:
- Why couldn’t Rosa Parks just get up and let that white guy sit down? He was probably more tired than she was.
- Martin Luther King was a nice Black man who was not mad at white people. Would he have wanted you to keep talking about race when it’s so upsetting to your parents?
- How did Malcolm X, Angela Davis, Jesse Jackson, Janet Jackson, John Lewis, LeBron James, Tupac Shakur, Colin Kaepernick, Kamala Harris, Barack Obama, Beyoncé, and George Floyd ruin the Civil Rights Movement by calling attention to their being Black all the damn time? Like, give it a rest.
Seventh Grade Math (now free of CRT!):
- True or False: 1+1= 3.
Answer: True. One mommy plus one daddy makes one baby which equals three, though baby > mommy.
- True or False: If x=2 and y=6 and you subtract y from x, you get -4.
Answer: False! There’s no such thing as a negative number. Math professors at liberal elite colleges made that up.
- If Kayleigh has two five dollar bills and Kevin has twelve quarters, which one has enough to buy a $9.50 ticket to see Dinesh D’Souza’s all-American movie “2000 Mules” about how libs stole the 2020 election?
Answer: Kevin is a loser. He only has four dollars, so he needs to work harder at his two after-school jobs. He shouldn’t expect the government to bail him out.
Tenth Grade Civics Research Paper Topics:
- Voting is a privilege, not a right. Discuss. And don’t you think literacy tests, land ownership, and poll taxes were kind of a good idea?
- How would you integrate Biblical precepts into American law? Should we ban shrimp? And do you agree that, as in Exodus 21:7, it’s OK to sell your daughter into slavery?
- Given that Jewish space lasers, Italian satellites, and dead Venezuelans can mess with our ballots, should America stop having these messy elections once President DeSantis gets to the White House?
Parents, you are now in charge! And when the governor runs all those lib teachers out of Florida, you can take over the schools.
As that godly man from Hillsdale says: “Here’s a key thing we are going to try to do. We’re going to try to demonstrate that you don’t have to be an expert to educate a child. Because basically anybody can do it.”
Diane Roberts is an 8th-generation Floridian, born and bred in Tallahassee. Educated at Florida State University and Oxford University in England, she has been writing for newspapers since 1983, when she began producing columns on the legislature for the Florida Flambeau. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Times of London, the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Oxford American, and Flamingo. She has been a member of the Editorial Board of the St. Petersburg Times–back when that was the Tampa Bay Times’s name–and a long-time columnist for the paper in both its iterations. She was a commentator on NPR for 22 years and continues to contribute radio essays and opinion pieces to the BBC. Roberts is also the author of four books.
From Flagler Live, July 27, 2022
How Ron DeSantis Could Wind Up Dictating Your Kids’ Textbooks
By: Philip Elliott
It’s no secret that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is laying the groundwork for a presidential run. For liberal parents in other states dusting off their pink hats, they’d be better served keeping an eye on the textbooks their local school boards are considering in the next few years. Because, in many cases, DeSantis and his allies in Florida could be effectively picking the reading lists from afar.
You see, in 20 states, officials in the state capitol pick what will be taught in local classrooms, down to the words on page, in exchange for fully funded book orders. That gives states with huge caches of students tremendous sway in what options are available in other states. Publishers are businesses; they chase the biggest markets. The publishers don’t have incentives to create Red State textbooks and Blue State textbooks. States and districts with huge checks can seek specific line edits while, with no disrespect for the roughly 70,000 students in D.C. public schools, Chancellor Lewis D. Ferebee cannot compel massive publishers to do the same on a matching scale. That’s why DeSantis is set to be the de facto arbiter of what millions of students—even outside of Florida—are learning. It is all in the name of keeping the kids safe from wokeness masquerading as math.
For years, publishers catered to the two giants, California and Texas. The New York Times in 2020 published an eye-opening and detailed comparison of one publisher’s telling of the American story—by the same authors—and found two very different versions of the country’s history based on in what state a student took social studies. For instance, The Times found a publisher inserted into a discussion of the Harlem Renaissance an observation that critics “dismissed the quality of the literature produced” for Texas audiences. In earlier Texas versions dating to 2014, Moses was listed among the Founding Fathers’ influences.
It was long assumed that publishers would adapt to chase California’s 6.5 million students and Texas’ 5.5 million. (Nationally, 51 million students are enrolled in K-12 public schools.) Florida has long had on the books an official list of approved textbooks for its 2.9 million students, but it was easy enough for publishers to make minor tweaks and repurpose the Texas books for Florida audiences. After all, sympathy for the NRA translates easily from Houston to Pensacola, as The New York Times’ Gail Collins found in a separate project.
This behind-the-scenes effort at indoctrinating students into their states’ mythologies is now pushing into public view, with DeSantis crowing about his fight to shape young minds. Even Texas’ conservative textbook would be insufficient for DeSantis. The figure who is seen as a strong contender in 2024—especially if former President Donald Trump ends up sitting out the race—gathered reporters on Monday to promote the fact that his state education department rejected 42 of 132 textbooks proposed for the next school year.
Their sin? The math texts seemed, in the estimation of Florida’s reviewers, to teach critical race theory and social-emotional learning, both considered verboten for conservatives who see wokeness creeping into their kids’ classrooms and, in the words of Puck, Woke War III looming. So almost half of the math texts were rejected, with little explanation for how word problems and geometry theorems can be used for indoctrination.
DeSantis is betting his political future—or at least the chapter where he seeks the GOP nomination—on the far right’s obsession with government overreach and its threat to kids. (TIME’s Olivia B. Waxman wrote a cover story for the magazine last year that unpacked why some activists are so deeply—and wrongly—worried that a graduate-level approach to policy analysis is teaching white kids to hate themselves under the guise of critical race theory.) The Sarasota Herald-Tribune’s political editor branded DeSantis “the chief of the woke police.” During the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, he emerged as the primary foil to Anthony Fauci, all but declaring coronavirus over in Florida. DeSantis signed a state proclamation declaring a female Florida swimmer the “rightful winner” of the NCAA championship after she came up short to an opponent who is transgender. He has signed into law a measure that explicitly bans schools from teaching students in third grade and younger anything about sexual orientation or gender identity. TIME’s Madeleine Carlisle has the details on the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law here.
And DeSantis is poised in coming weeks to sign into law the “Stop W.O.K.E. Act,” which makes it illegal for companies or schools to conduct trainings that could make people uncomfortable about the actions of their ancestors. It’s a sweeping measure that would protect the feelings of white people—and one that other states are considering as the latest chapter of the culture wars spreads from coast to coast. But these moves have helped DeSantis emerge as a favorite 2024 candidate for the Fox News crowd.
DeSantis is following in the footsteps of other White House hopefuls and test-driving a national agenda at the statehouse. One of DeSantis’ predecessors, Jeb Bush, used his time in Tallahassee to emerge as a champion of an education overhaul on a national stage. Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry oversaw the state’s strong economic growth, fueled by low taxes and dramatically basement-level regulation, which then enticed major companies to relocate to his state. And Mitt Romney’s turn as Massachusetts’ Governor made him into a leader on health care, an accomplishment that would haunt him as his policy’s central plank would help build Obamacare.
DeSantis’ style of courting grievance might be the right way to win a primary in a Republican Party that has, at least since 2015, decided to preach from the gospel of Trumpism. But his efforts miss this fact: Americans writ large don’t really care about this in the same way as kitchen-table issues like taxes and healthcare. Polling shows most Americans support teaching all history and admit that this country has historically favored white men. Republicans’ losses in 2018 and Trump’s defeat in 2020 should give the GOP some concerns. DeSantis has the fundamentals of a skilled political effort, but those alone can’t get him into the White House. After all, Jeb Bush, Perry, and Romney all resonated with a loud corner of the Republican Party, but didn’t electrify a national audience. But in the meantime, DeSantis could end up picking kids’ math worksheets from Santa Fe to Charlotte—power that might tee up his national ambitions.
From Time magazine, April 27, 2022