Originally published at: What's actually inside the math books that Florida banned? | Boing Boing
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On brand for the modern day GOP
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Social Emotional Learning. SEL is about teaching kids emotional skills, kindness, confidence, etc.
AKA teaching kids things that are repugnant to GOP politicians.
I can easily imagine their alternative “the cruelty is the point” curriculum: lots of Ayn Rand to start.
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Being a monster seems to be popular on the far-right these days, probably gatewayed by Lobster Daddy.
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What’s in side those books? Knowledge/Learning/Critical Thinking, ya know those pesky things that make you a Liberal.
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The Right increasingly defines themselves in terms of what they are against, not what they stand for. They used to have actual ideas forming platforms about how to manage government finances, what agencies were more important than others, etc. I didn’t agree with them, but they had ideas at least. Now they are just against whatever it is they heard a democrat say most recently. They don’t know what it meant, but they sure are against it.
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Some of the examples Florida’s department of education posted appeared to come from the teachers’ editions. It’s not clear the students would be exposed to the SEL material unless the teacher made a point to follow the publisher’s suggestions.
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Clearly certain figures are required to remain hidden.
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That is what is surprising about the right wing these days. They used to argue that being informed about an topic is a good bulwark against government interference of the day to day lives of average americans… that WAS the position of the libertarian movement so much so they hung their hats on it (i.e. folks like Ron Paul and Penn Gillette for example). The problem with that is that the populace needed to be very well educated and the government had to be extremely transparent about lobbying, lobbyists & most government spending outside of state intelligence & military programs for that to work… and who went out of their way against those things? It’s a very obvious guess.
It’s no shock at all they became this anti-capitalist.
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Maybe they finally found Obama’s “Death Panels.”
*(Seriously, that’s what this IS-- another made-up bogeyman to feed their self-righteous rage.)
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It’s looking more like what’s in the only books they DID allow, i.e. they were all published by the Carlyle Group.
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Oh hey guess which certain VA governor was a former co-CEO of the Carlyle Group.
Good on the GOP for riding the culture wars to enrich their buddies because someone’s gotta make money exploiting people i guess?
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Yep. They even had notions about standards education should be held to, kind of a “common core” of knowledge students should learn. They’re so wildly against those now, but they actually got started in the Reagan era and we’re supported by several Bushes. 
It’s like you say, they have no platform, no moral compass, and are just against whatever Dems might like, even if it was their idea in the first place. So their only option is to find things that no one wanting to serve the public good could possibly like, and support those, and that’s what they’re doing.
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What a monstrous thing to be teaching children.
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Follow the money!
ETA: @liquidus beat me to it!
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Soooo - I am not one for conspiracies, and I have not verified this is true… but given that the Republican party is all about that grift:
What I heard is that the approved textbooks are all from a company in Texas, run by the Carlyle group, who Youngkin was the co-CEO of. So Youngkin and deSantis both are pushing “anti-woke” text books - who just so happen to be connected to the one company that is making acceptable books.
Oh, I found an article about it:
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I’m old enough to remember when Republicans were the smart ones. Now, it is the opposite. Instead of William F. Buckley we have Ronald DeSantis. Sad. Isn’t it?
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The modern GQPer would shout “Fag!” and stuff Buckley in a locker
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Yep. Don’t just look at the books which were banned; look at which publishers escaped the ban and where their money goes.
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I read the NYT article about this earlier.
In a McGraw Hill fifth-grade book, shown below, students are encouraged at the beginning of the school year to write a “math biography” reflecting on their feelings about the subject and how they expect math skills could help them enjoy hobbies or achieve goals.
I can remember a math teacher in Grade 8 trying something like this. Seemed like kind of a waste of time to me. I don’t think the teacher really understood the point either. But eh, that was me.
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