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Florida rejects 54 math books, claiming critical race theory appeared in some
- Koshkin 4y agoI guess, differential equations should not be used in the formulation of "institutional dynamics."
- treeface9000 4y agoI'd like to see some concrete examples... but if it's truly in there -- good for them! It has absolutely no reason to be in a math textbook.
- theropost 4y agoExactly, if this is really news worthy, they should be posting examples along with the agenda
- azemetre 4y agoI think we can all know why examples aren't being included, it's just egregious politicizing for personal gain. DeSantis wants to run for President, all these moves just improve his chances at winning the primary. What's crazy is that he only won the Governor election by very small margins. He's acting like Florida is a deep red state. It's going to backfire on him IMO.
- k1ko 4y agoHe's got a 54% approval rating as opposed to 38% disapproval. He's also running at 58% approval among independents. Finally, he is also polling double digits against any potential Democrat challenger. Pretty clear his policies have been popular with most Floridians.
- azemetre 4y agoHe won by less than 40k votes (something like less than half a percent) [1], I’m sorry but that’s a dangerous game to play if you want to win general elections. Polls this early don’t matter, polls the weeks before election does. This is nothing but political grand standing. Also independent voters are a misnomer. Independents will typically vote for their preferred party the majority of the time, they're still partisans they just don't vote in primaries. [2] [3] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Florida_gubernatorial_election#Close_margin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Florida_gubernatorial_ele... [2] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/few-americans-who-identify-as-independent-are-actually-independent-thats-really-bad-for-politics/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/few-americans-who-ident... [3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2014/01/08/most-political-independents-actually-arent/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2014/01/0...
- JaimeThompson 4y agoIf a parent finds something goes against their beliefs should they be able to stop their kids from learning about it in school?
- klyrs 4y agoThat isn't quite on the nose: if a parent finds something goes against their beliefs should they be able to stop everybody's kids from learning about it in school?
- JaimeThompson 4y agoI should have provided more context, some states allow parents to opt kids out of individual subsets of classes such as sex education and the like.
- HideousKojima 4y agoIt'd be nice if the Florida DoE actually included some examples of the objectional text
- josephcsible 4y agohttps://www.fldoe.org/academics/standards/instructional-materials/ https://www.fldoe.org/academics/standards/instructional-mate...
- mgkimsal 4y agoIf you give people specifics, they can argue about those specifics. Handwavy "crt" claims are all most people need to support this decision. Digging in to actual facts and specifics gets too messy, and might cause people to have to think too much.
- timintheglades 4y agohttps://dailycaller.com/2022/04/21/desantis-examples-critical-race-theory-textbooks/ https://dailycaller.com/2022/04/21/desantis-examples-critica...
- cool_dude85 4y agoIndeed, even the names of the books are not released.
- bandyaboot 4y agoThey do not want to jeopardize this moral panic they've crafted by showing people concrete examples of what it's all about.
- capableweb 4y agoI can understand rejecting them for "failed to meet curriculum standards", but what does "incorporate prohibited topics or unsolicited strategies" really mean? Are there math topics and "stategies" that are illegal in the US/Florida somehow? I also understand that including critical race theory in math books seems wildly irrelevant (unless I miss something) and therefor not fit for the curriculum. But I'm interested to hear how that happens in the first place? Who includes education about "intersection of race, society, and law" in mathematical books, for what purpose? Shouldn't that belong to some other educational program instead, like society or history classes?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- bmcahren 4y agoUnsolicited strategies are "core math". I am convinced 98% of the books are banned because of this but they tossed in CRT to get peoples' wallets out for political donations. Title may as well have been "dear leader protects children".
- HideousKojima 4y agoI could imagine it being something along the lines of "The economic productivity of a typical black slave was X... yada yada yada... how many dollars in reparations does America owe modern black Americans Y years later at interest rate Z." I could also imagine it being something much more benign. I really wish we could see what it actually was so we could see if the DoE's judgement here was reasonable or not.
- capableweb 4y ago> I could imagine it being something along the lines of "The economic productivity of a typical black slave was X... yada yada yada... how many dollars in reparations does America owe modern black Americans Y years later at interest rate Z." That does seems a bit unnecessary example since there is high racial tensions and the book is supposed to be about math. You could just use another example in that case. If it was about cases like that, I might just agree with them being rejected. > I really wish we could see what it actually was so we could see if the DoE's judgement here was reasonable or not. Agree, seems weird to not show people what the problem was if it's easy to justify. But then again, a lot of judicial, government and politics from America seems weird to me so...
- muhehe 4y agoCan someone simply explain what is this critical race theory?
- gizajob 4y agoThe giveaway is in the name.
- marsven_422 4y ago
- foxyv 4y agoTalking about anyone other than White people. In all actuality it is the idea that race doesn't exist, it's just something made up by people to exploit other people with different skin color. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_race_theory#Tenets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_race_theory#Tenets
- gizajob 4y agoYes. Race doesn't exist, which is why we need affirmative action.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- vmception 4y agoConsensus is a gradient amongst representatives in a system where compromise is paraded as a feature instead of a bug. The cognitive dissonance you experience is because there is no specific individual supporting these competing ideas.
- gizajob 4y agoI was highlighting a paradox in the postulate above mine, not expressing cognitive dissonance which is an ungrounded assumption to make based on such a pithy comment.
- andrew_ 4y agoWhat's the over-under on how long it takes for this thread to devolve into mud-slinging?
- spacemanmatt 4y agoWord on the street is, it'll be quicker than TTP
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- vmception 4y ago
- areoform 4y agoSuch news stories add credence to the idea that the web + social media have been a universal solvent for societies. Especially democratic societies. Three decades ago, such a move would have been an eyebrow raising 2 to 5 minute news story on the evening news. Or, mentioned in a tiny column in the newspaper on some page. Most people wouldn't have come into contact with it. Let alone with such vigor that it led to an us v. them dynamic. It would have been a somewhat pointless gesture that would have been quickly forgotten. Editorial discretion would have pulled to something more "important" such as Presidents pressuring interns into sexual activity. Today, due to the attentional nature of the internet, the same story is quite attractive. No matter what your stance, you click on it, at least once, because it's bizarre. It's distilled catnip. On HN as well. People and machines notice that you're clicking on it. So people start talking about it on social media. Which you engage with. And so more of it is served to you by the machines looped in. On and on until you spend an hour or more of your life on a topic you probably wouldn't have touched or known about thirty years ago. The emotional valence created by the issue is overpowering as compared to the past, and it's self-sustaining. Forever propagating through the intellectual wastelands we're self-curating. Humans have been dying on pointless hills for thousands of years. But our technology has amplified it to quite an art form.
- zahma 4y agoWell said, and this feedback loop you refer to fits into the “culture wars” narrative that prepossesses many news establishments as they vie for eyeballs to reinforce their ad revenue and bolster their Twitter feeds. Some of this stuff is click bait, but other stories take on lives or their own whereas they would ordinarily be forgotten about shortly after arrival.
- slowhand09 4y ago
- notreallyserio 4y agoAre we still talking about math books or did you mean to post this elsewhere?
- Bhilai 4y agoThe article is lacking in substance because it does not actually tell you what material in the math books was so egregious that the book deserved to be banned or may be state of Florida did not publish this information. Banning books seems to be the new battle ground for politicians, sigh.
- croes 4y ago>The names of the rejected books were not included. So what else could they do? Don't write about it?
- dariusj18 4y ago> Banning books seems to be the new battle ground for politicians This is not a new battle ground
- beezle 4y agoIIRC they said that the state of Florida did not actually provide a list of the rejected titles so no way to verify the state claims. Knowing past history of these types of things in other states I doubt there is much to hang a hat on.
- JaimeThompson 4y agoIt's lacking in substance because those in Florida making the decisions aren't releasing their reasoning or even a list of the books they aren't accepting. Some Florida politicians have asked for the info and the media has filed FOIA or the Florida equivalent for the details.
- namelessoracle 4y ago"Banning" = "Not buying" now? The books can still be bought and sold, they just wont be with public dollars. Is Harry Potter "banned" now by most of Twitter too?
- car_analogy 4y ago> state of Florida did not publish this information. Correct. DeSantis is using the journalistic practice of branding something as some flavor of offensive, without citing any examples. This is the first time I see journalists complain about it and demand specifics.
- NoImmatureAdHom 4y ago
- ironSkillet 4y agoI would be curious if anyone has a high quality link containing real examples that were deemed offensive. My guess is the textbooks had sections that involved quantitatively examining "social justice" issues. I'm not for or against this in a math textbook, but it definitely gives an opportunity to "spin" the situation by massively simplifying the problem discussed, which opens the door to politicization.
- JaimeThompson 4y agoThose making the decisions to not accept the books didn't release that information.
- chmod600 4y agoWith so little information it's not clear what we can discuss.
- civilized 4y agoAgreed. It seems useless and brain cell-killing to be subjected to the hot takes from each side's chattering class, without access to the exact books and passages that led to these bans.
- coldcode 4y agoThere is no details for the exact reason that Florida did not supply any details other than the negative hot-button words. Complaining the coverage is inadequate is silly since the whole story is that Florida banned textbooks without saying what. I can accept a detailed list of examples of things that are not acceptable. Banning books without any detail is the story.
- chmod600 4y ago"Banning books without any detail is the story." But is it? The headline seems focused on the hot-button issue rather than the process. And it provides no context about the scope of the problem (is Florida's process an outlier here?), or other examples.
- civilized 4y agoI think the hot take culture war approach to the issue reduces the pressure for transparency, since the hot take generators act as if they have everything they need to decide exactly what to think without any further data. My guess is that the books were banned for bad reasons, but my guesses aren't of much value without verification.
- Volundr 4y agoReally? We can't discuss the fact that our government is making decisions about what teachers can and can't teach children, and have decided they can keep the entire process, including their decisions secret from us? That feels like enough to discuss to me.
- tmountain 4y agoFloridian here. I've lived here all my life, and DeSantis is the first Governor under whom I have felt that the entire agenda is piss off people who aren't politically aligned with his values. Not a week goes by without some inflammatory new policy making it into the news cycle, and it saddens me because Florida has a ton of problems that we could be collaborating on legislatively, but instead, it's just partisan brinkmanship day in and day out. I'm a fourth generation Floridian, and I've lived in the state for 42 years. I plan on moving my family out of here sometime in the next few years, as I don't think the future holds anything better here. This is the first time in US history where a Governor has unilaterally drafted map redistricting an entire state, and it will give the GOP a 4:1 advantage. That's not democracy, it's a rigged system, and removes the will of the people from the equation. For me, it's not a liberal/conservative issue, it's a representation issue, and an issue of priorities. Basically, I'm tired of the bullshit, and I think there are better places to raise a family, so I'll be taking my talent and tax dollars elsewhere.
- spacemanmatt 4y agoTexan, here. I know exactly what you mean.
- usrn 4y agoThat's a good thing. There are a number of mutually exclusive positions the left and right simply don't agree on. At this point the only way to achieve peace is if like minded people moved together and the ones that don't get along separate. That goes for California as well as Florida. It's painful in the short term but everyone will be happier long term. That's why it's the "United States" and not a "homogeneous nation state."
- tmountain 4y agoI take your point, but it elides a significant cohort of the population that doesn't have the financial resources to make such a choice. The proposed redistricting eliminates black/brown districts from the current electoral map, and those populations won't have the representation they have today as a result. A lot of these folks don't have the financial means to go elsewhere, so they're on the losing end with nowhere to go.
- spacemanmatt 4y ago
- mattboardman 4y agoDoes the Florida DOE have a set of guidelines for how they determine if material is inappropriate for students? Seems like if the Government is going to make decisions for the people they should at least have an idea on what grounds these decisions are made upon.
- bavell 4y agoYep, all the guidelines are public: https://www.fldoe.org/academics/standards/instructional-materials/ https://www.fldoe.org/academics/standards/instructional-mate...
- JaimeThompson 4y agoSoon they will loop back around to banning / modifying the teaching of evolutionary theory like some tried in the recent past because of "religious" reasons.
- bediger4000 4y agoI have a suspicion that banning teaching evolution is the ultimate goal here. Or maybe just getting rid of public schools altogether, but leaving in place a mandate for children to get an 8th grade education. Religious schooling will always be cheaper, since we don't tax churches, so all the voucher money will go to schools that teach creationism.
- mardifoufs 4y agoI think that's just a variant of the slippery slope fallacy. There's nothing related to religion here, and they have not mentioned anything about evolution.
- JaimeThompson 4y agoActually they have if you look at some of the groups that support some of this stuff and the language they use. Very reminiscent of the language used in their attempts to ban evolutionary teaching and related subjects. A lot of the same groups against CRT are also against LGBTQ rights on the basis of religious beliefs.
- seanicus 4y ago“Our desire is to … confront the culture in which we all live today in ways which will continue to advance God’s kingdom, not to stay in our own safe territories,” Betsy DeVos said. Cited from this article: https://religionnews.com/2017/02/06/5-faith-facts-betsy-devos-trumps-pick-for-secretary-of-education/ https://religionnews.com/2017/02/06/5-faith-facts-betsy-devo... Are you so far inside your bubble that you can't connect conservative values aligned to religious thinking to the conservative push to defund public education benefitting private parochial schools?
- mezcaliente 4y agoI found more information on the Florida Dept. of Education site: https://www.fldoe.org/academics/standards/instructional-materials/ https://www.fldoe.org/academics/standards/instructional-mate... This appears to be the list of the 132 books submitted for review: https://www.fldoe.org/core/fileparse.php/5574/urlt/2021-22-Short-Bid-report-Final-xlsx.pdf https://www.fldoe.org/core/fileparse.php/5574/urlt/2021-22-S... And this I believe is the list of books that were approved: https://www.fldoe.org/core/fileparse.php/5574/urlt/2122MathAdoptedMaterials.pdf https://www.fldoe.org/core/fileparse.php/5574/urlt/2122MathA...
- mardifoufs 4y agoWait so why is everyone saying that they have not published the book list? Am I missing something?
- mezcaliente 4y agoThey haven't published an explicit list of the rejected books but unless I'm mistaken we can figure that out from the difference of these two lists.
- JaimeThompson 4y agoBecause they only made the lists available a few hours ago instead of days ago when they released the notice.
- JaimeThompson 4y agoFrom Rep. Anna V. Eskamani / Florida elected representative. Books accepted https://www.fldoe.org/core/fileparse.php/5574/urlt/2122MathAdoptedMaterials.pdf https://www.fldoe.org/core/fileparse.php/5574/urlt/2122MathA... Books rejected https://www.fldoe.org/core/fileparse.php/5574/urlt/2021-22-Short-Bid-report-Final-xlsx.pdf https://www.fldoe.org/core/fileparse.php/5574/urlt/2021-22-S... https://twitter.com/AnnaForFlorida/status/1516039809143300098 https://twitter.com/AnnaForFlorida/status/151603980914330009...
- bell-cot 4y agoIt might be worth recalling Richard Feynman's old story about being part of the California textbook selection process - a process so profoundly dysfunctional and corrupt that Dr. Feynman may have been the only member of the evaluation committee who actually read a meaningful percentage of the textbooks which they were passing judgement on. (No, I see nothing in NPR's story to suggest that they compared Florida's stated reasons for rejecting various textbooks with the actual contents of the textbooks.)
- tarboreus 4y agoThis is a really useless news story. Couldn't they do a little legwork and figure out which books were rejected? I'd really like to see what material was in these math books. I'm guessing the rejection is some level of overreaction, but it's hard to say how much without knowing what's being rejected.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 4y agoThey haven't listed the books banned or given examples of the content they find objectionable. Until they do this is just political theatre that relies on peoples imaginations to fill in the blanks.