The Republican Party continues to fight its endless culture war against the Democrats, specifically regarding the education system. The Republican governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, recently started to work on a bill in the Florida legislature that would go after the education system even more. Governor DeSantis is most likely getting ready to announce that he is running for the Republican presidential nomination in the coming months and it seems like this decision leads up to his campaign announcement. He is declaring war on the education system and trying to ensure that schools stop teaching a “woke agenda.” DeSantis prides himself on making Florida a state where, in his words, “wokeness comes to die.” DeSantis is trying to make sure to keep Critical Race Theory out of schools, which is a philosophy only taught in law school.

What he is actually getting rid of is the teaching of essentially any American history that is not white American history. He recently forced the college board to change the AP African American History course because it too closely resembled “Critical Race Theory.” He has also been trying to ban all sorts of books from Florida schools which is not a good thing. Just because you disagree with a book does not mean that you should try to keep people from reading it. Florida is banning all sorts of books that have no right to even be banned, such as “The Handmaid’s Tale,” “The Hate You Give,” and “Wicked,” We should not be telling our children that they are not allowed to learn. We should encourage them to learn and formulate their opinions on their own. You can not tell history classes to stop teaching any history that makes people feel bad or uncomfortable. If people are starting to feel uncomfortable, that means that you are teaching history right. The US did a lot of really bad things in our history; you should feel uncomfortable. We need to learn about those bad things so that history doesn’t repeat itself. There was a time in history that there was a man that was restricting education and banning and burning books. That person was Hitler. 

Now DeSantis is trying to go after higher education by supporting a bill that will really restrict what happens at colleges. It will keep colleges from having clubs like safe space, Black Student Alliance, Latinex Student Alliance, or other clubs like that. This bill will also eliminate majors like Jewish Studies, Race Studies, Gender Studies, and others majors from Florida public colleges and universities. DeSantis says these majors are designed to push an ideological agenda, which is untrue. This bill also is trying to keep universities from getting Diversity Equality and Inclusion offices. This is awful, and while Florida is the first state to do this to colleges, it probably won’t be the last. There is a good chance that a bill like that might even come to Virginia with our Governor Youngkin. Republicans are trying to keep us from teaching about the rich diversity that we have in this nation, which I think is not right. One thing that makes America so great is the fact that we are so diverse. We were a nation that was built and made up of immigrants.