Shame on Paul Burns (Florida’s K-12 education chancellor), Commissioner of Education Manny Diaz and every school board member who supports Governor DeSantis’ Straight, White, Christian dogma.
It’s bad enough they’ve committed the equivalent of book burning. It’s shameless that they try to justify the ashes. Slaves developed skills that could “benefit” them?
There is growing controversy over Florida’s new education standards that call for middle schoolers to be taught that some enslaved people actually benefitted from slavery, after Gov. DeSantis signed the “Stop Woke Act” last year. https://t.co/hFjMmWbkVI pic.twitter.com/tFbwbWOBn6
— CBS Mornings (@CBSMornings) July 24, 2023
The Republicans did what they had no ethical right to do. They usurped the authority of professional educators who for decades determined school curricula based on a principle espoused from Socrates to John Dewey: What is worth knowing?
The answer was universally accepted science, literature and factual history with the objective of developing critical thinking. But critical thinking is a threat to dictators like DeSantis. Thus his racist, homophobic and populist legislation. Years ago, I created the first Black Literature curriculum in Newtown, Connecticut.
Benefited from slavery? Critics say some of the state’s examples were never even slaves. https://t.co/0MC8YoboQc pic.twitter.com/NNElwh5reL
— South Florida Sun Sentinel (@SunSentinel) July 22, 2023
Students developed empathy and a desire to create a more just nation. Florida students deserve the same opportunity.
We must repudiate this degradation of education by all means necessary, or else the Class of 2024 will graduate with honors in propaganda.
June S. Neal, Delray Beach
Trump’s worst enemy
Once again, President No. 45 (Donald J. Trump) has proven to the sane Americans among us just how delusional and out of touch with reality he is, with his latest outburst against the likelihood of yet another impending indictment.
He continues to be his own worst enemy.
Alan B. Wackerling, Plantation
Don’t ever leave a kid behind
Baker County, Lakeland, Port St. Lucie, Holmes County, Palm Bay, and Orange City, Florida. What do all these places have in common?
All have had recent cases of babies dying in a hot car. From 1998 to 2022, there were 102 children killed in Florida after being left in hot cars, including five this year. As we all know, the weather in Florida in recent weeks has included a heat index of up to 110 degrees or higher. Can you imagine what that heat does to a little body trapped in a car?
Even with every technological advance on new cars, including alarms telling you that someone is left in the car, people still leave their precious children in a broiling vehicle.
Is aborting an embryo worse than having a viable, living, breathing, talking, walking child die an unspeakable death in a car that can soon heat up to 130 degrees or more?
Would these irresponsible mothers put their children in an oven? That is the equivalent. Where are the people picketing against abortion when this happens? Mothers who leave children in sweltering cars, accidental or not, should be charged with murder.
Rosanne Gordon, Boca Raton
Suspicious fluctuations
Alex Jimenez’s letter to the editor suggesting collusion on gasoline prices in Winter Park is similar to what’s happening in Lake Worth Beach.
I noticed that a name brand gas station, not far from me, has the lowest gas prices in the area. When the station’s price goes down to $3.19 per gallon, in a few days it jumps back up to $3.49. All other stations in a seven-mile radius go to the same $3.49 per gallon. This has happened many times over the past seven months. Recently, the price at that one station fell to $3.14 per gallon. I thought the cycle had stopped. After a few days the price went up to $3.49 and the other stations soon followed suit. This is no coincidence.
Ed Kessler, Lake Worth Beach