JACKSONVILLE, Florida (LifeSiteNews) — Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed legislation on Thursday banning woke indoctrination during teacher training.
HB 1291 specifically prohibits the “distort[ion] of significant historical events” and the teaching of “identity politics” in teacher preparation courses. It also bans courses “based on theories that systemic racism, sexism, oppression, and privilege are inherent in the institutions of the US and were created to maintain social, political and economic inequities.”
DeSantis explained during a press conference that while Florida has already enacted a law banning critical race theory, for example, in public school classrooms, teachers continue to be trained to teach these ideas in their own college education.
“This bill prohibits the indoctrination in teacher preparation,” DeSantis said. “There’s not gonna be DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion), there’s not gonna be any of the bogus history, it’s just gonna be standard teacher preparation without having an ideological agenda.”
“Parents want to send their kids to school knowing they get an education,” he continued. “I don’t think they’re interested in an indoctrination.”
“To say you’re going to take one viewpoint, one perceptive, and try to impose that as the standard for curriculum, that doesn’t work in Florida, and we don’t do it,” he added.
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One of the bill’s main sponsors, Rep. Berny Jacques (R-Seminole), said that Democrat state representatives called a point of order, claiming he broke decorum when he called leftist indoctrination “woke garbage,” according to Florida’s Voice.
“So I took a deep breath and I came back with a more polite term, and I called it woke rubbish,” said Jacques.
Rep. Anna Eskamani (D-Orlando) criticized the bill during a House session for its attempt to enforce “color blindness” in teacher education.
“Many of you might think that ‘color blindness’ is the way….but let me be clear that color blindness is a racial ideology that attempts to ignore conversations about race for one’s comfort,” said Eskamani in March.
An elementary school teacher in Duval County applauded the bill for paving the way for the authentic, truth-based formation of teachers.
“What this bill is so wonderfully providing is an opportunity for educators to not be blind anymore,” she said, Florida’s Voice reported. “The goal is to make more educators feel confident about what history is without hidden agendas.”
The newly enacted legislation reinforces a “Freedom from indoctrination” bill signed in 2022, which prohibits the teaching in schools of Critical Race Theory tenets, such as that “an individual, by virtue of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.”
The law addresses components in teacher training curriculum that assert, for example, that “white privilege” is deeply engrained in U.S. institutions, with the aim of propagating this view among public school students.
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