PENSACOLA, Fla. \u2013 Last November, the Florida Board of Education approved new standards for an upcoming \u201cHistory of Communism\u201d curriculum coming to the state’s schools.<\/p>\n
FDOE officials said the standards were “developed by Florida educators and content experts.” They\u2019re set to be implemented to middle and high school students beginning in the 2026-27 school year.<\/p>\n
“With the adoption of the History of Communism Standards, Florida is leading the nation by equipping students with a truthful, in-depth understanding of how communist ideologies suppress individual freedoms, abuse power, and inflict widespread suffering,” FDOE said.<\/p>\n
WEAR News reached out to Escambia County Public Schools on Wednesday about the new curriculum. In a statement, the district said:<\/p>\n
These benchmarks have been added to various course descriptions throughout K-12 social studies. The majority of these benchmarks are in two elective courses created at the high school level.<\/p>\n
Paul Fetsko serves on the Escambia County school board.<\/p>\n
He says this isn’t the first time Florida has required students to learn about communism.<\/p>\n
“It was an Americanism versus communism course,” Fetsko said. “It was a semester course [14 years ago] that was required of all seniors.”<\/p>\n
“As the standards and benchmarks have changed, things get assumed into other courses or they are taken away because something else becomes a more pressing topic,” he added.<\/p>\n
The new state standards require middle and high school students to study the history of communist governments, including how communist regimes have been linked to poverty, famine, political repression, and violence.<\/p>\n
The majority of these benchmarks are in two elective courses created at the high school level.<\/p>\n
The curriculum also requires at least 45 minutes of instruction each year on victims of communism day — a state-mandated day of remembrance created under the law.<\/p>\n
“I think this is Florida’s attempt to say lets give young people factual information about what the differences are and what are the true implications of that ideology is,” Fetsko said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PENSACOLA, Fla. \u2013 Last November, the Florida Board of Education approved new standards for an upcoming \u201cHistory of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":356696,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-356695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=356695"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356695\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/356696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=356695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=356695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=356695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}