The mini dictator of Florida has been attacking education at every turn….and his newest attack goes a bit far….well most of the attacks go too far in my opinion….

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis continued his campaign on Monday against what he views as “woke” ideology in the education system. The governor and presumptive 2024 presidential candidate signed into law a measure that prohibits the state’s public colleges and universities from spending money on what are known as DEI initiatives, or diversity, equity, and inclusion, reports the Washington Post. “DEI is better viewed as standing for discrimination, exclusion, and indoctrination,” said DeSantis Monday at New College of Florida in Sarasota.

He also banned courses that, in the law’s language, “distort significant historical events,” teach “identity politics,” or are “based on theories that systemic racism, sexism, oppression, or privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States and were created to maintain social, political, or economic inequities,” per the Orlando Sentinel. Under the legislation, Florida colleges will have to review courses and majors offered to students and ditch ones that cover what DeSantis deems “niche” areas such as critical race theory. “Florida is getting out of that game,” DeSantis said. “If you want to do things like gender ideology, go to Berkeley—go to some of these other places.” Some opposing views rounded up in coverage:

• “The government has no role in banning or censoring subject matter in higher education,” says Andrew Gothard, head of United Faculty Florida, which represents faculty members across the state.
• “It’s basically state-mandated censorship, which has no place in a democracy,” says Irene Mulvey, president of the American Association of University Professors.
• “Indoctrination drives the DeSantis agenda not because he is worried educators are indoctrinating students, but because they aren’t indoctrinating them with HIS ideology,” says Democratic state Sen. Shevrin Jones.

Florida is not alone in this war on education…..almost every Red State has some form of attacks….all of which are a march toward authoritarianism.

There are no commanding visions of public education at work in the United States. These are dark times for education, teachers, librarians, Black youth, trans people, young people and the empowering principles of academic freedom, critical thinking, civic courage, and a shared notion of citizenship. Since the 1950s, and especially since the 1980s with the election of Ronald Reagan as President, there has been an intense struggle both to privatize public schooling and to corporatize higher education.[1] In its updated and expanded version, the current far right extremists in the Republican Party are waging a naked attack “on the very existence of public education.”[2] In the first half of the 20^th century, the established conservative common sense operated off the assumption that the central purpose of education was to prepare students at different levels for their station in the workplace or in the larger global corporate order. A growing far right version of the conservative movement increasingly argued that the idea of schooling as a public and common good was anathema. Schools were now disparaged as government schools or even worse, “socialist training camps.”[3]According to these assassins of public education, schools had become a byproduct of a government that used them to enforce a poisonous notion citizenship defined through the values of equity, freedom, justice, and equality.[4]

Public Education as a Domestic Machinery of Indoctrination and Disposability in the Age of Fascist Politics

These attacks are doing nothing to make this a better country.

If anything it is dumbing down our children which makes for more pliable adults….so far it is working like a clock.

We need to be vigilant or we will lose everything we have worked for in the past.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”