This week, Florida public education under attack again, when the state Department of Education rejected a new Advanced Placement (AP) African American Studies course from the College Board, the nonprofit that runs a nationwide program of college-level courses. “As stated, the content of this course is in stark contrast to Florida law and significantly lacks educational value,” the DOE wrote.
In the past year, with other education advocatesI have warning that thing educational gag order such as Florida’s”Stop the Woke Act“-what limited education about so-called “divisive notions” related to race, gender, and identity—possibly putting AP and other early college credit programs enrolling millions of students at risk.
Now it happened: an AP course, developed by renowned scholars like Harvard’s Henry Louis Gates, Jr.and pilot in a classroom in Florida, has been banned because politicians disagreed with its scholarship and legislators made opinion-based censorship of classroom subjects legal.
That’s not good for free speech and educational practice, and it’s especially worrisome for high school students in Florida. When politicians go to war with teachers, students always lose.
Nearly 1.2 million high school students take an AP test in 2021, with more than 750,000 people getting at least 3 out of 5 on at least one test, the minimum score some colleges will accept for college credit. (Other colleges only give 4 or 5 credits.) Those students who have earned a college-level certificate can transfer for a fraction of the cost of college tuition—only $97 per lesson. A successful test is worth three or four college credits, allowing them to accumulate college credits early, thereby cutting down on tuition and the time it takes to graduate from college.
It’s the earlier and less expensive access to college-level material that the governor’s action would deny Florida students. in one September essay criticizing the AP’s African American Studies course, commentator Stanley Kurtz wrote that the course “will draw students away from American history and other conventional subjects.” But there is no evidence that is the case.
In fact, AP African American Studies can provide additional course credit for students who have passed the AP U.S. or World History exams, or attract new students. find topics more interesting than existing courses. Prohibiting the course in Florida schools appears to be more likely to reduce the number of students studying relevant material or earning AP credit. And it’s worth noting that when Arizona banned ethnic studies courses in 2010, a federal judge rule the ban is unconstitutional and “fueled by racial hatred” to pursue “discriminatory purposes.”
Furthermore, the ban on AP African American Studies clearly demonstrates the overt censorship intent of the gag law in education. DOE Florida’s statement that course content is “contrary to Florida law” presumably refers to the state’s “Stop WOKE Act.” This law is facing a lot of challenges its constitutionality and is currently limited in part by a preliminary command, prohibits course content that “endorses, encourages, advances, inculcates, or forces” students to believe in specific concepts of “race, color, sex, or national origin”. However, the course doesn’t do those things; it only presents essays by historical thinkers that help students understand the history of African-American thought.
But now we know that Florida’s gag law forbids that, too. Because the law requires courses to be “consistent” with a set of principles that include supporting color blindness and meritocracy and rejecting the notion of unconscious bias (social stereotypes about groups that students individuals unconsciously form), including only essays in the course that present or argue these ideas would be illegal if the law were in effect. The DOE’s letter now makes it clear that if students were taught about central ideas in the history of African-American thought, it would be in violation of Florida law.
It is true that the state government has the power to regulate public education. But in a democracy, we must reject attempts to limit what can be discussed in schools on narrow ideological grounds. Course content bans and teacher gag orders are tools of authoritarianism. They go against the subject-matter expertise that should form the school curriculum. And it is always wrong to use educational opportunities for students as a political football game, no matter what elected or appointed official is doing it.
Lawmakers who value the reputation and effectiveness of the education systems in their states should treat this unwise censorship as a cautionary tale. This is not how public education is administered in a democracy.
Jeremy C. Young, Ph.D., is the senior manager of free speech and education at PEN America.
