In a press release, the department said 54 of the 132 textbooks presented will not be added to the state’s accepted list because they do not adhere to Florida’s new standards or contain prohibited topics.
The report said the list of rejected books accounted for approximately 41% of those sent, the highest in Florida history.
Reasons for rejecting textbooks include references to critical racial theory, “the inclusion of Common Core and the unwanted addition of socio-emotional learning (SEL) to mathematics,” the statement said.
Critical theory of race has been politicized in recent years, with opponents arguing that the field of study is based on Marxism and a threat to the American way of life. But scholars who study it say critical racial theory examines the ways in which the history of inequality and racism in the United States continues to affect American society today.
Florida banned the teaching of critical racial theory in schools in June 2021. At the time, Gov. Ron DeSantis said resolving critical racial theory in schools would teach children that “the country is rotten and our institutions are illegal.”
According to the ban, schooling must be “factual and objective”. It explicitly prohibits “theories that distort historical events” – including the teaching of critical racial theory, which means the theory that racism is not just a product of prejudice, but that racism is embedded in American society and its legal systems to sustain the supremacy of white people. “
Florida also banned study materials from the 1619 Pulitzer Prize winner of the New York Times Pulitzer Prize for Restructuring American History around August 1619, when the first slave ship arrived on the shores of America.
The highest number of rejected books is for grades K-5, where the “alarming” 71% were not properly aligned with Florida standards or included prohibited topics, the statement said.
Despite the rejection of 41% of the submitted materials, each basic course and class in mathematics is covered by at least one textbook, the statement said.
In a statement, DeSantis said he was grateful for the department’s thorough review of these textbooks to ensure they were in line with the law.
“Some publishers seem to have tried to paint on an old house built on Common Core and indoctrination concepts such as racial essentialism, especially, oddly enough, for elementary school students,” the governor said.
CNN’s Leah Asmelash contributed to this report.
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