A publisher removed references to Rosa Parks’ breed in a draft of its textbook to comply with Florida laws, NYT reports
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A publisher removed references to Rosa Parks’ race in a draft textbook for Florida.
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Studies Weekly changed language to conform with the Stop Woke Act, the New York Times reported.
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The editor also removed references to race in a Civil War lesson.
A science and social studies textbook publisher used in 45,000 Florida schools first removed all references in a lesson plan on running by Rosa Parks to comply with Florida’s Stop WOKE Act, the New York Times reported.
Studies Weekly prepared a version of his lesson on parks for first graders for the state social studies curriculum review. This version of Parks — the black woman who refused to give up her bus seat to a white man — doesn’t specifically mention that she was black, according to the Times. Instead, the publisher writes that she was told to move “because of the color of her skin”.
A second version goes even further and does not mention race at all.
“She was told to sit in a different seat. She didn’t. She did what she thought was right,” reads the textbook passage, according to the Times.
Another example from the same publisher, provided by the Times, shows a fourth-grader lesson about the Civil War that removed language that blacks were discriminated against under “Black Codes,” a set of laws that became law after the Civil War Restrictions on liberties were created by Black people instead of choosing language like “certain groups”.
According to the Times, current lessons used in Florida classrooms mention segregation and references to race. The Times reported it was unclear whether or not these versions with no mention of race were submitted for review. The publisher told the Times that it had withdrawn from state review.
John McCurdy, executive director of Studies Weekly, told the Times that the changes were made to comply with the Stop WOKE Act, a law signed and approved by Gov. Ron DeSantis that restricts how schools and workplaces and discuss gender issues. The Florida Department of Education told the Times that the publisher exaggerated, saying that publishers who “avoided the issue of race in teaching the civil rights movement, slavery, segregation, etc., were not complying with Florida law.”
DeSantis signed the Stop Woke Act and the Don’t Say Gay Act into law in 2022. These laws have resulted in the removal of thousands of books that were not state-approved from school classrooms and prevented high schools from teaching AP African American Studies. The FDOE also amended the Stop Woke Act to ban critical race theory from being taught in schools.
The FDOE and Studies Weekly did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.
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