Board of education replaces course at 12 public universities with own US history curriculum, in latest ‘anti-woke’ attack

Educators are warning that college enrollment in Florida will plummet after the state removed sociology as a core class from campuses in the latest round of Ron DeSantis’s war on “woke ideology”.

The Republican governor’s hand-picked board of education voted on Wednesday to replace the established course on the principles of sociology at its 12 public universities with its own US history curriculum, incorporating an “historically accurate account of America’s founding [and] the horrors of slavery”.

The board faced a backlash last summer for requiring public schools to teach that forced labor was beneficial to enslaved Black people because it taught them useful skills.

The removal as a required core course of sociology classes, which Florida education commissioner and staunch DeSantis acolyte Manny Díaz insisted without evidence had “been hijacked by leftwing activists”, follows several other recent “anti-woke” moves in education in Florida.

  • Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    classes like psychology and sociology are annoying

    It’s a bummer that you had that experience. Mine were absolutely fascinating. That said, my school had some flagship social science departments, so the people that instructed there were not the b-team.

    If a university doesn’t have a good program in a particular discipline, good people don’t want to work there, and the current staff often don’t have the expertise to hire for it.

    • /home/pineapplelover@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      They’re alright classes. I enjoyed the professors I had but I feel like the majority of people want to speed through the GEs and get going on their actual major classes.

        • /home/pineapplelover@lemm.ee
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          4 months ago

          I remember writing a research paper on roe v wade not to long ago. Thought it would be an easy paper that’s kind of socially acceptable and not at all controversial. Found out that conservatives do wild shit like kill doctors and harass rape victims. I hate society.

    • grue@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      The quality of an overall department and the quality of classes taken by non-majors to fulfill degree requirements are two different things. For example, my university has a great architecture school, but that didn’t stop the “history of industrial design” class I took to fulfill my art requirement (as an engineering major) from being mostly an exercise in memorizing pictures of chairs.

      • Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Did your university have a good industrial design or product design department? Industrial design is very very different than architecture. (I went to school for industrial design and instructed university courses in the department)

        • grue@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          It appears to be ranked in the top 10 in the lists I checked, so yes.

          • Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world
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            4 months ago

            Interesting. Bummer that you got a shit class. Mine GE history glass was pretty good, and it got into the different design movements, what drove them, and how they impacted industrialization, usability, accessibility, and other elements of contemporary life.