Last Friday, Florida's Department of Education — which, along with Gov. Ron DeSantis, has been setting the agenda for conservative attacks on education for the last two years — announced that it had rejected 41 percent of the math textbooks proposed by the state's schools. Why? Supposedly the books contained "impermissible" material related to critical race theory (CRT), Common Core and "social emotional learning."
In the department's press release, Florida Commissioner of Education Richard Corcoran, a longtime warrior against public education, described the move as a continuation of the state's commitment 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." DeSantis himself suggested the textbooks contained "indoctrinating concepts like race essentialism," and praised Corcoran for having "conducted such a thorough vetting" of the books to make sure they complied with Florida's recent ban on CRT.
