The declaration lists a series of principles such as parents being the primary educators of their children and public education money always following the children.
The principles also call for:
— Schools to be fully transparent with parents.
— Schools to prioritize proven teaching methods “rooted in foundational subjects over fads or experimental teaching methods.”
— Education to be “grounded in objective truth, free from ideological fads,” while also being focused on “America’s founding principles and roots in the broader Western and Judeo-Christian traditions.”
— Students to be prepared for challenges and responsibilities of adulthood and taught “the whole truth about America — its merits and failings — without obscuring that America is a great source of good in the world.”
Also Thursday, the board approved new standards tied to a 2024 law (SB 1264) that requires instruction on the history of communism.
Among other things, students will be asked to compare the Communist Manifesto and the Bill of Rights; communist and socialist thought; the effects of anti-communists on American communism between 1917 and 1956; the harm done by communist espionage; and the roles of anti-communist politicians, including the late President Harry Truman, the late President Richard Nixon, the U.S. House Un-American Activities Committee, and the late U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy.
While at the Freedom Tower in Miami last Friday to mark Victims of Communism Day, Gov. Ron DeSantis said that while America won the Cold War, the communist ideology hasn’t gone away.
“It comes back and it’s repackaged, and they try to do it under various different banners. And so you have to understand what’s at stake here,” DeSantis said.
“I think it’s important to talk about it in a very clear eyed way, the destruction, the lives of 100 million dead at the hands of Marxism, Leninism,” DeSantis said. “But I think it’s also important that we just recognize the whole absurdity of it all, of the whole idea of communism and Marxism, Leninism.”