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Notes -
A couple of weeks ago, in the week of Jan 16 thread, there was a discussion of the kerfuffle re Florida refusing to offer the pilot of AP African American Studies. There were a couple of minor developments last week. First, the course description is available here
Second, Florida specified its objections here
Now, I am not a fan of most "studies" courses, because, in my limited experience, they tend to lack rigor and often push a political viewpoint, which is both a disservice to students and, to the extent that students are required to parrot that viewpoint, a First Amendment violation when the course is taught in public schools (and in private schools as well, in California). I have not looked closely at the course description for the AP class, so I don't know if it has those flaws. That being said, this decision by Florida seems to be more a part of the DeSantis for President campaign than a principled objection. That is because the course description is not a curriculum, and the course description, like all AP course descriptions, says:
I have attended several AP trainings in my day, and can attest that they make a big deal about individual teachers being given autonomy, as long as their syllabus addresses the content and skills set forth in the course description. So, none of the readings complained about are required, and teachers are free, as required by Florida's "Stop WOKE Act" to assign readings on all sides of the issues in question.
And, btw, the claims on the other side that Florida does not want to teach African American history is also nonsense, because teaching of African American history is mandated in FL schools
Edit: PS: There is a very odd complaint in the Florida DOE's list: It objects to a reading by one author in part because, "Kelley's first book was a study of Black communists in Alabama." Not, 'an adulatory study," but merely a "study." It is like objecting to a reading by Donald Horowitz because he wrote a study of ethnic riots.
Or, in other words, the complaints against DeSantis seem to be more a part of the long-running "Defeat DeSantis" campaign than a principled objection? I don't think there's any question that DeSantis is angling for the White House, such that everything he does can be plausibly cast in that way. But asking politicians for principled objections seems to always and everywhere end up as an isolated demand for rigor.
The complaints from Florida seem perfectly reasonable to me; I regard so-called "intersectionality" as much more like a religion than a legitimate form of academic inquiry, and I don't see any value in teaching it in schools (beyond, perhaps, including it in a religious studies course as an example of a secular dogmatism that has emerged in response to the broad exclusion of deity-oriented faith from public debate). Of course, reasonable minds may differ on this point, and I'm comfortable with each state education system in the U.S. reaching its own conclusion through standard legislative processes, which Florida has done here.
But I am also broadly disinterested in having "standardized" education across the country, and would rather see states actively competing in that arena rather than outsourcing everything to monocultures like the College Board. Very few people seem to actually care about AP Black-Queer-Feminist-Communism, and most of the complaining I see is false claims (as you noted) about black history being removed from Florida schools. Given that no actual history is being excluded from Florida schools, only certain forms of political indoctrination, what complaint remains? The complaint that DeSantis is doing this for the votes?
I have a lot of problems with democracy, but ultimately "politician doing the things his voters want him to do" just isn't very high on my list of things to worry about.
ETA:
This seems like a great way to get poor scores on the exam, though. "You are free to teach what you like" does not translate into "and your students will still do well on the exam." Students who are not closely able to at list imitate the dogmatic thinking from the objectionable readings seem unlikely to do well on the exam that is the ultimate point of any AP class. My own experience with AP exams is that failure to hew closely to the "suggested" readings will often leave your students swinging in the wind.
Was the end of this just a silly throwaway joke, or did I miss something in the syllabus? "Black-Queer-Feminist" seems to be thoroughly covered, but the closest thing I see to socialist or communist thought is the inclusion of "racial capitalism" in a list of forms of racism, and without looking deeper at the texts I can't tell whether this is a case of an adjective being used for association or just for categorization.
Reportedly, one of the concerns Florida expressed is that Robin D.G. Kelley, specifically, advocates for communism. But more broadly, "critical theory" is largely the new phrase people use to refer to theories that used to be called "cultural Marxism" before people decided that phrase referred to anti-Semitic conspiracy theories instead of, you know, the huge body of academic work by people who literally called themselves cultural Marxists.
Somewhat ironically, it is the critical notion of "intersectionality" that gave rise to the sense that people can't talk about e.g. feminism or racism without also being "allies" for every other "progressive" cause (or at least every other progressive cause with a stripe on the flag). But the moment Florida says "we really don't like communism" suddenly everyone is supposed to accept that Kelley's work on communism is just cleanly separable from the other stuff Kelley wrote. It's a classic motte-and-bailey--which makes sense, given that it is ultimately a postmodernist critique, and the motte-and-bailey doctrine was specifically identified to critique postmodernism.
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