Shortly after Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed SB 1048, the Benchmarks for Excellent Student Thinking (B.E.S.T.), into law, the Florida Department of Education (FDOE) announced it has “rejected just under half of the textbooks submitted for curriculum inclusion for the 2022-2023 school year,” including 54 math textbooks because they could ‘indoctrinate’ students and make them all ‘woke.’
According to the Committee for children, a global nonprofit, SEL is a “process of developing the self-awareness, self-control, and interpersonal skills that are vital for school, work, and life success.” The organization said SEL teaches problem-solving, self-discipline, and impulse control, among other topics.
In a press release, FDOE claimed it “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.
“It seems that some publishers attempted to slap a coat of paint on an old house built on the foundation of Common Core, and indoctrinating concepts like race essentialism, especially, bizarrely, for elementary school students,” said Governor Ron DeSantis. “I’m grateful that Commissioner Corcoran and his team at the Department have conducted such a thorough vetting of these textbooks to ensure they comply with the law.”
“We’re going to ensure that Florida has the highest-quality instructional materials aligned to our nationally-recognized standards,” said Commissioner of Education Richard Corcoran. “Florida has become a national leader in education under the vision and leadership of Governor DeSantis. When it comes to education, other states continue to follow Florida’s lead as we continue to reinforce parents’ rights by focusing on providing their children with a world-class education without the fear of indoctrination or exposure to dangerous and divisive concepts in our classrooms.”
