ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. — Some students on the First Coast are heading back to school this week.
Teachers will be teaching new African American history standards. They are standards that have drawn criticism from across the country for whitewashing history.
History professor Dr. Michael Butler at Flagler College has an interesting perspective on this issue.
His expertise is the Civil Rights movement in the U.S. He just spoke at a conference of more than one hundred history teachers in Florida’s public schools.
He said they wanted to talk about the state’s controversial new African American history standards approved in July.
After participating at several of these events over the years, Butler noticed something different this year with the teachers.
"Eighteen months ago when everything was beginning to happen from the legislative perspective, 'Stop woke.' 'Don’t Say Gay.' There was a lot of confusion among the teachers. And now with the latest African American history standards, there’s a lot of anger."
One of the standards that has drawn criticism states some enslaved people gained skills that later benefitted them.
Butler says while teachers are upset about that idea, they're upset there are other "erroneous" elements.
"It lists 17 names of people who were enslaved and used their status to acquire skills that proved beneficial to them," Butler noted. "When in fact, 9 of these 17 were never enslaved."
Butler also says if students are taught the news standards in primary school, he expects a lot of confusion and necessary reteaching once they get to his classes and other college courses.
"At the college level, we’re going to have to do a lot of deprogramming to demonstrate through the primary sources exactly what human enslavement looks like to those who were enslaved," Butler said.
The committee that came up with the new standards was appointed by the governor.
But Florida’s commissioner of education defends the new African American history standards, saying in a tweet: “Florida is focused on teaching true and accurate African American history.”