JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Separating fact from opinion in teaching is what Florida's education commissioner says he wants to do with a plan to remove what he calls "indoctrination" from the classroom.
Some groups are worried those changes will leave out critical historical context.
Many classroom educators are opposing the move.
Our view of history is always changing, especially in the past few years of dramatic social change.
But Florida's education commissioner wants to limit how much new perspective can be applied to subjects like American history.
“We’re passing a rule this coming month that for the 185,000 teachers, you can’t indoctrinate students with stuff that’s not based on our standards,” Corcoran said.
Corcoran made the statements at an "Education is Freedom" conference at Hillsdale College this weekend.
In answering a question about limiting "indoctrination," Corcoran falsely claimed he fired Lee High School teacher Amy Donofrio for having a Black Lives Matter flag in her classroom. Duval County Public Schools says Donofrio was reassigned to non-teaching duties.
Bacardi Jackson, managing attorney and senior supervising attorney for children's rights at the Southern Poverty Law Center says the move is limiting students to learn only one perspective.
"The movement to try to make teaching less inclusive, to make history less inclusive, is something that we've seen before. This is not a new chapter in world history," Jackson said.
Corcoran says his proposal would require teaching materials to be factual and objective. It's something he says they have tried to address in the past.
“We rewrote all of our standards. We did all of that stuff and then we did a book adoption, which now the book publishers are just infested with liberals,” Corcoran said.
Florida Education Association President Andrew Spar is against the proposal.
“Florida isn’t going to equip students as critical thinkers by hiding facts. Students deserve the best possible education we can provide and the truest and most inclusive picture of their world and our shared history," Spar said in a statement issued Wednesday.
"If giving kids a good education is the goal, the rule could be amended to say in part: ‘Instruction on the required topics must be factual and objective, and may not suppress or distort significant historical events, such as the Holocaust, slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction and Jim Crow.’ Those who don’t learn history are destined to repeat it," Spar wrote.
Jackson agrees that history from all perspectives needs to stay.
"We have a history in its traditional form, as it has been told, that eliminates the realities for so many people. And so when we use buzzwords like traditional history, we know those are in fact, dog whistles," Jackson said.
"A very Eurocentric history [was traditionally taught] that left out the cultures and left out the contributions of so many people. Our nation is great precisely because we've had patriots who have stood up and made it great by demanding that it be great...that's what we should be teaching our children, not to be pawns, not to be following just whatever anyone puts out as propaganda, but they need to be able to analyze and think critically," Jackson adds.
A vote on the rule proposal is expected at the Florida College of Jacksonville on June 10.