Florida's Department of Education has decided to ban math books,
a huge percentage of math books for elementary school students.
And the reason why they've decided to do this is because they're concerned
that the math books include CRT and other theories that they disagree with,
that have been banned by Governor Ron DeSantis.
Now, the details are fascinating especially because the education
department refuses to give any specifics.
So there are no receipts and I have a theory on why they're doing this.
So the Florida Department of Education stated 54 out of 132 of
the textbook submissions would not be added to the states adopted list.
Because they did not adhere to Florida's new standards or
contained prohibited topics.
The release said, this is the press release from the Education Department,
said the list of rejected books makes up approximately 41% of submissions,
which is the most in Florida's history.
So let's just stop for a second, as we know,
critical race theory, CRT, is a graduate level.
Meaning it's not even taught in undergrad for the most part, graduate school is
where that theory is taught and debated, it's in a college setting.
This is not what's taking place in elementary schools and it certainly is not
being injected in math textbooks, but let me give you more details.
Reasons for rejecting textbooks included, references to critical race theory,
inclusions of Common Core, and
the unsolicited edition of social emotional learning in mathematics.
The highest number of books rejected were for grade levels K-5,
where an alarming 71% were not appropriately aligned with Florida
standards or included prohibited topics and unsolicited strategies.
AKA 71% of the math materials for
kindergarten through fifth grade were rejected, okay?
They just rejected it, now, they write in their press release about this.
Quote, it is unfortunate that several publishers,
especially at the elementary school grade levels,
have ignored this clear communication and have attempted to slip rebranded
instructional materials based on Common Core standards into Florida's classrooms.
While others have included prohibited and divisive concepts such as
the tenets of CRT or other unsolicited strategies or indoctrination,
despite the Florida Department of Education's prior notification.
And by the way, tenets over in that graphic,
if you want to put it up real quick is in brackets because we had to
correct the Florida Department of Education.
They had written it as tenants, as in people who rent an apartment.
>> Idiots, that makes sense cuz they are republicans and
they have a war on intelligence, I'm not kidding, and it's not hyperbole.
So when they started the war on science, we called it out.
So no, evolution shouldn't be taught, well, it's facts.
I know, but the facts make me uncomfortable, but I know, but it's
a science class, we have to teach biology, how else do you want us to teach it?
I just lie to them, say that women came from the rib of man,
but that's not biology.
That's your voodoo in your particular, others said it, okay?
So they always hated that, they always hated science because of that,
but then vaccines, goddamn science, we don't like science.
So I I said at one point it's gonna get so absurd,
they're gonna do a war on math and here we are, okay?
Because they want to replace all facts with their propaganda.
So math has lots of facts and they hate it.
I mean this isn't this greatly ironic, because they're like I'll cancel the other
stupid classes, we just need to do reading writing and arithmetic, okay?
Now, they're like okay fine, cancel arithmetic, okay?
What is the tenets of CRT?
They say that because, of course they're not teaching critical race theory in
kindergarten through fifth grade in math.
So what they're probably referring to is, they mentioned a black person boo,
we hate black people, tenets of critical race theory, take away all the math.
>> I mean but did they?
Because I don't even know if that's the case,
because they did not provide a single concrete example.
Because why would they?
They don't need to, they have the Governor on their side,
the Governor empowering them.
And my take on this is a little different, obviously it's based on speculation.
So take it for what it's worth.
>> Because they won't tell us why they did it.
>> They won't tell us exactly, no, when they say that they wanna do away
with certain parts of the public education system, things like music,
art, whatever it is, social studies, they claim that they're doing
it because they want students to excel in what's important, right?
They want them to excel in English and math, English and math,
look at how bad the English and math scores are.
But I think that's a lie, I think there's more to it than that.
I think that they specifically want to dissolve public education.
In fact, some of the prominent individuals on this Florida Department of
Education have been very blunt about it.
So let's get to that, first, let me start off by giving you
Governor Ron DeSantis' statement in regard to these book banning.
And let's be clear they're banning books in Florida.
He says 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.
I'm grateful that and remember this name, Commissioner Corcoran and
his team at the Department have conducted such a thorough vetting of these
textbooks to ensure they comply with the law.
Now, who is this guy that he's giving credit to, his name is Richard Corcoran,
he's the commissioner, and
he's had his share of political scandals in the past year.
He announced that he'd be leaving his post by the end of April, but not because of
any wrongdoing, it's because he wants to make more money as a political consultant.
But let's get into his history with public education.
His planned departure date is in late April.
It comes a few months after the Department of Education came under fire for trying to
steer a multimillion dollar contract to a politically connected company.
The bidding scandal is under review by De Santis' chief Inspector general.
I'm sure that's totally good faith investigation and
they'll get to the bottom of that.
>> They get to the bottom dollar on that, I'll tell you that right now.
>> Yeah, exactly, let me give you more, records and
interviews show that before the Florida Department of Education asked for bids,
it was already in advanced talks with the company to do the work.
Subverting a process designed to eliminate favoritism.
The company is MGT consulting,
led by former Republican lawmaker Trey Traviesa of Tampa,
a longtime colleague of the state's education Commissioner, Richard Corcoran.
Yeah.
>> Interesting turn of events.
>> Now, because of this investigation, a new round of bidding began, but
I wanna talk about Corcoran and his wife, they home school their children.
He is not a believer of public education, in fact, he's on the record for that.
He has pushed for the privatization of education as speaker of the house and
called teachers unions repugnant and evil.
The president of the Florida education association also called him a Betsy DeVos
clone.
he's clearly easily corruptible, by the way, in 2017,
Florida House Speaker Richard Corcoran and
one of only two state-level politicians who attended the infamous Koch
brothers-hosted summit in Colorado, was one of them.
He promptly flew home and
announced a plan to kill Florida's public election financing laws, which help elect
candidates who don't want donations from the corporation's utility companies,
real-estate magnates and billionaires who effectively control state politics.
And as for DeSantis himself, I'm sorry about that,
he's been bankrolled by none other than the DeVos family.
And remember the DeVos family has one specific goal, privatized public
education, they're on record with that, they're very aggressive with that.
Former Education Secretary DeVos and her family have donated more than
$280,000 to back Florida governor Ron DeSantis' re-election effort
amid his crackdown on discussions of race and sexual orientation in schools.
My theory is, they want the students to fail in everything, including
their math scores, so they can make a case for privatizing public education.
That is what the real goal is here, and they'll just site critical race theory or
whatever culture war they're engaging in.
Cuz it's not about the actual culture war for them,
I want you guys to understand that that's the facade.
What this is really about is power, profit, and privatizing education and
that is the direction they're headed in, in states like Florida.
>> So that is a great point and great research by Anna.
>> By Kate, I wanna give credit to our producer Kate.
Yes, so, I just wanna summarize though, It's not just one issue.
So is there the cancel culture of banning books and
banning anything that doesn't fit Republican propaganda?
Definitely, do they also hate the teachers union?
They think it's Democratic and they wanna destroy the teachers.
Yes, those two things are very important.
But the third part that Anna is talking about here is so true, and
I'll give you one last thing to give you a sense of how true it is.
So when they talk about canceling social emotional learning,
when they cancel art projects, music projects, all these things, he said,
he talks so derisively, different ways to learn.
You don't know, stinking different ways to learn, everyone the same way, okay?
Why?
Well, that'll lower your test scores, cuz it clearly makes more sense if, because
everybody's brains are wired differently, that hey, if you have a couple of
different ways of learning, it might help some students more than your standard way.
Yes, arts, music, etcetera, it's really important.
How do I know they think it's really important, cuz when you go to the private
schools, the number one thing, they emphasize is, electives.
>> Yep. >> They're like,
look at all these electives we have, unlike those thinking public schools.
>> They're learning mandarin, okay?
They're banding it up, playing the tuba and stuff,
they're having a grand old time in the private schools.
>> And in the private schools, whether it's Florida, California or
anywhere else, you will never see any discussion of should we
ban teaching mandarin because the Chinese are evil etcetera.
In the public schools, If you try to teach Mandarin,
they'll they'll rip your head off.
But in their schools that their kids go to and then they make money off of, right?
Electives like you wouldn't believe, gorgeous art centers for
arts, music, robotics classes, etcetera.
They get everything, they get the whole enchilada and
they redirect public money into those private schools.
So the DeVos' can get rich, so that their rich kids can have great education,
and they can steal the money from public education that goes to your kids.
>> So they don't have to pay taxes to fund the public education.
>> So that's this scam, now, how many traditional
media outlets have broken that story for you?
Their kids also go to private schools and
let alone the fact that this would take actually a little bit of research and
a little bit of understanding of the political context in this country.
That's why you'll never see this on tv and it barely gets covered in newspapers, but
this is the actual game that's being played.