WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris mentioned extremists need to “substitute historical past with lies” as she traveled to Florida on Friday to assail Republican efforts to overtake instructional requirements, plunging right into a battle over education that has rippled by means of lecture rooms across the nation.
“They dare to push propaganda to our kids,” she mentioned in Jacksonville. “That is america of America. We’re not supposed to try this.”
Her journey got here two days after the Florida Board of Training authorised a revised Black historical past curriculum to fulfill laws signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican presidential candidate who has accused public colleges of liberal indoctrination. The brand new requirements embrace instruction that enslaved individuals benefited from expertise that they realized.
“How is it that anybody may recommend that within the midst of those atrocities that there was any profit to being subjected to this stage of dehumanization?” Harris requested.
She didn’t point out DeSantis by identify, as an alternative referring to “so-called leaders.” Nonetheless, the speech was one other instance of how Harris has been the White Home level particular person for addressing cultural points akin to race, education and abortion that DeSantis has taken on within the governor’s workplace and on the marketing campaign path.
In Salt Lake Metropolis on Friday, DeSantis doubled down on earlier arguments that the brand new curriculum was wanted to forestall liberal indoctrination and accused Harris of making an attempt “to demagogue” and politicize historical past.
He mentioned he wasn’t concerned in devising the Board of Training’s requirements however defended the elements regarding how enslaved individuals benefited.
“They’re most likely going to indicate is a number of the of us that ultimately parlayed being a blacksmith into doing issues later, later in life. However the actuality is: All of that’s rooted in no matter is factual,” he mentioned.
Earlier, DeSantis accused the Biden administration of being “obsessed” along with his state because it ignores different issues, like border safety and crime.
Harris, the primary Black particular person to function vice chairman, spoke from the Ritz Theater and Museum, positioned in a traditionally African American neighborhood of Jacksonville.
She described “true patriotism” as “preventing for a nation that shall be higher for every era to come back,” and he or she mentioned colleges would higher put together college students for the world in the event that they don’t gloss over historic crimes.
“Allow us to not be seduced into believing that one way or the other we shall be higher if we overlook,” she mentioned. “We shall be higher if we keep in mind. We shall be stronger if we keep in mind.”
Christian Ziegler, chairman of the Florida Republican Social gathering, mentioned Harris was out to “lecture Floridian dad and mom that their kids belong to the federal government and the federal government has a proper to indoctrinate and sexualize our kids.”
He mentioned “the federal government overreach on parental rights has already been overwhelmingly rejected in Florida.”
President Joe Biden and Harris have pitched their reelection marketing campaign round preserving freedoms, they usually view schooling points as one technique to spotlight Republican extremism.
In a video saying his bid for a second time period, Biden warned about Republicans “dictating what well being care choices girls could make, banning books, and telling individuals who they will love, all whereas making it tougher for you to have the ability to vote.”
Jacksonville is a uncommon shiny spot for Democrats in Florida, a longtime swing state that has grow to be more and more secure for Republicans. Donna Deegan, a Democrat, was elected as town’s mayor in Might, and Harris tried to spice up morale among the many celebration devoted on Friday.
“We gotta remind the parents of Florida that you just’re not preventing out right here by your self,” Harris mentioned. “We consider in you.”
Florida has shifted to the correct below DeSantis’ management. As governor, he’s signed laws on quite a lot of schooling points, akin to banning drag exhibits at colleges and imposing new necessities for transgender toilet use.
In 2022, he signed what he known as the Cease WOKE Act, which limits how race might be taught at school and which the governor used to assault essential race principle — a topic he has described as “crap.” The regulation primarily says college students can’t be made to really feel responsible about their race due to injustices of the previous.
Critics mentioned the regulation was DeSantis’ try and suppress an correct account of Black historical past. The regulation is being challenged in courtroom.
“The total measure of African American historical past will not be a hand-picked Rosa Parks right here and a Martin Luther King Jr. there,” mentioned Democratic state Sen. Bobby Powell, who’s Black. “It’s the sweeping assortment of tales spanning a number of centuries, the teachings of cruelty and inhumanity interwoven within the dedication of a individuals to dwell and breathe free. It’s as a lot Florida’s story because the nation’s story and it must be totally advised.”
Earlier this yr, the DeSantis administration rejected a Faculty Board Superior Placement course on African American historical past, which DeSantis mentioned was “indoctrination.”
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Farrington reported from Tallahassee, Florida.
