Florida middle and high school students are receiving expanded instruction on the history of communism this school year, with lessons examining regimes including the Soviet Union, Mao-era China and Castro’s Cuba as well as the suppression of speech, religion and individual freedoms under communist governments.
The curriculum expansion comes amid a broader political debate over younger Americans’ attitudes toward capitalism and socialism and what students should learn about competing economic and political systems.
Speaking with The National News Desk, Education Freedom Foundation founder Erika Donalds said Florida’s large population of residents with firsthand experiences under communist and socialist governments makes the subject particularly relevant to students in the state.
“We have 2 million residents here in Florida who fled those types of environments,” Donalds said, pointing to people who came from countries including Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.
Donalds said those experiences can provide students with firsthand perspectives on life under authoritarian governments.
“Why wouldn’t we be utilizing especially that history that lives right here in Florida to make sure students understand why America is a capitalist country and why we value the rights that come from God as secured by our Constitution?” Donalds said.
The expanded instruction for students in grades six through 12 is intended to cover the history of communist movements and governments, including their political ideologies and the experiences of people who lived under them.
Donalds argued the lessons are especially important as socialist candidates gain greater attention in American politics and polling shows younger Americans hold different views of capitalism and socialism than older generations.
She also questioned why the history of communism had not received greater attention in classrooms previously.
“It’s concerning,” Donalds said. “Florida is, of course, leading, as we normally do in implementing this, making sure that our teachers are trained and that students are learning the true history of socialism and communism, authoritarian regimes.”
The conversation also turned to how political and economic systems are presented in textbooks.
Donalds previously served on a Florida school board and said her experience reviewing educational materials made her concerned about how publishers portrayed subjects including capitalism, socialism and communism.
“This is about 10 years ago when we first started having public reviews of textbooks, and I was shocked by what I was seeing,” Donalds said.
Donalds alleged some textbook companies had begun presenting capitalism more critically while minimizing the consequences of communist governments.
“It was very clear that these textbook companies began to lean very far left to water down the impacts of communism and socialism and to speak against capitalism,” she said.
Those comments reflect Donalds’ assessment of the materials she reviewed rather than an established characterization of educational publishing as a whole.
Donalds specifically recalled reviewing material involving the U.S. Constitution that also directed students to examine the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948 and outlines a series of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. The United States voted in favor of its adoption.
Donalds argued that presenting the document alongside the Constitution could diminish students’ understanding of the distinctive principles underlying the American constitutional system.
“It waters down, again, the value of our constitutional rights to those students when it’s comparing the two that really have no comparison,” Donalds said.
The interview also examined polling indicating younger Americans have increasingly favorable attitudes toward socialism.
Figures discussed during the segment indicated 53% of Gen Z respondents viewed socialism favorably compared with 45% who viewed capitalism favorably, while 38% expressed a favorable view of communism.
Donalds argued those attitudes demonstrate a need for more comprehensive instruction about the historical consequences of communist governments.
“That means more than one in three of that generation favorably view something that is so dangerous and has resulted in millions of deaths around the world,” Donalds said. “That means we are not teaching the true history of that type of regime.”
Polling on capitalism and socialism can vary significantly depending on how questions and political systems are defined, but multiple surveys in recent years have identified a substantial generational divide in attitudes toward the two economic systems.
Donalds said students should learn not only how different political philosophies are described in theory, but also how governments operating under those philosophies have functioned historically.
She argued that proposals associated with democratic socialist candidates can sound attractive when presented primarily in terms of lowering costs or expanding government services.
“It sounds very generous, right? Socialism,” Donalds said.
But she said students also need to understand potential economic tradeoffs and the risks of concentrating political and economic power in government.
“When you start talking about the power that gets amassed and it’s no longer the power of the people, but starts to be a power of only the government — and what results from that?” Donalds said.
Donalds said the goal should not simply be telling students whether an ideology is good or bad, but giving them enough historical context to evaluate competing systems.
“You’re not teaching that these things are good necessarily, but you’re not teaching: What are the downsides? What is the true history of how this has played out across the world?” she said.
She also called for greater emphasis on America’s founding documents and the ideas behind the country’s constitutional system.
“We have to do a better job in our education system teaching the founding document of our country, why our Founding Fathers set up our system of government the way that they did because they learned from the mistakes of the past around the world,” Donalds said.
As Florida students begin receiving the expanded instruction, the curriculum is likely to remain part of a broader national debate over how schools teach communism, socialism, capitalism and American history — and how much those lessons influence the political views students carry into adulthood.