Thomas and Lydia dissect Florida's FACT curriculum, a 2023 alternative to the AP African American Studies course rejected by Governor DeSantis as contrary to state law. They critique the Wilfred M. McClay-recommended textbook for omitting "racism," linking progressivism to eugenics, and framing Reaganomics positively while ignoring Clinton-era complexities. With districts like Orange and Seminole County opting out due to factual inaccuracies and shallow cultural coverage, the hosts conclude that this state-led initiative prioritizes ideological purity over historical nuance, effectively creating a segregated educational reality. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
Time
Text
The Woke Monster Arrives00:02:50
What's so scary about the woke mob, how often you just don't see them coming?
Anywhere you see diversity, equity, and inclusion, you see Marxism and you see woke principles being pushed.
Wokeness is a virus more dangerous than any pandemic, hands down.
The woke monster is here and it's coming for everything, Instead of go go.
Boots, the seductress Green Eminem will now wear sneakers.
Hello, and welcome to Where There's Woke.
This is episode 130.
I'm Thomas.
Over there is Lydia and her pet fly.
Yeah, we'll see if he makes it.
He's pretty fly for a house fly.
Hi, how are you?
I'm doing well.
Yeah.
Thanks for asking.
I have more of a voice than I did last time.
That's true.
Keen listeners might have picked up on that.
Yeah, yeah.
Listen close.
Do a forensic comparison, everybody.
I know it's hard to tell, but yeah, my voice is getting better.
I would say it's not 100%.
I like the sexy husky voice.
So, of course, I'm in mourning.
I hope everyone respects me and my time of grief.
But no, it's okay.
It's probably good for the listeners.
I'm excited.
What are we going to be talking about today?
Well, I feel like we haven't talked about Florida in a while.
So, I wanted to revisit Florida, just all of Florida, I think.
Yeah, which odds wise, it is crazy to not have talked about the worst anti woke.
Bullshit state.
Yeah.
One of, you know, I will say I do check in on New College every now and then because I want to know how things are going and stuff.
What's the sports doing?
We got a good question.
New College sports update.
Wow.
It's around the same time of the year as last because I feel like we did it toward the end of the year last time or whatever.
Yeah.
The end of baseball season.
Yeah.
Which is the end of the year, like the actual school year.
Sports update, New College.
Are you going to look it up?
No.
Okay.
But I will say something that's interesting about New College is there's actually a documentary that has come out.
It's making like the festival circuit right now.
And it's a documentary about the takeover.
And I can't wait to see it.
Why aren't we interviewed in it?
I know.
Well, I was like, I was like, rude.
I said we, I meant you.
It's fine.
It's fine.
It talks to the students and the professors and sort of the general goings on there.
Yes, they were probably more relevant, whatever.
Then the other big news is there is talk about consolidation of another university campus, basically giving it to new college.
That's yeah.
It's going to slowly eat the entire Florida college system.
Yeah.
Things are not great in Florida, but we're going to take.
A step down the education ladder and talk about high school specifically in Florida and something that happened in 2023.
Ron Desantis's Florida Offer00:15:36
We're going to go all the way back there and the repercussions now that we are seeing in 2026, all because Ron DeSantis had a bug up his butt.
Okay, he is a bug up somebody's butt.
He looks like a bug that lives in someone's butt, actually.
This freaking fly in my room is probably like the.
Yeah, the fly's like, Ron DeSantis.
I know, I hate that guy.
Yeah, but we're going to be talking about all of that.
Sort of the history behind this and what this means for potentially high schoolers in the state of Florida.
Well, I'm excited.
Wokies, engage.
No, I don't know.
We'll do a take our usual break.
Yeah.
Make it so.
We'll take our usual break.
You can avoid the ads and support the show.
Patreon.com slash where there's woke.
We'll take a quick break and then we'll hear all about Florida and high school, I guess.
Yeah.
All right.
Take me back to my high school day.
No, don't do that.
But I don't mind hearing about other high school things.
Yeah.
You took AP classes.
Yeah, sure.
What AP classes did you take?
Oh, geez.
Okay.
So you're going to start the AP dick measuring?
Yeah.
I didn't take them.
AP dick measuring?
It's the only one I passed.
I took, of course, AP calc.
Aren't there two AP calcs?
I don't remember.
Yeah, I think it's like calc AB, calc BC.
Oh, shit.
Yeah, I wasn't.
First off, my school wasn't like.
I figured your school didn't have it.
Yeah.
Yeah, like we had, you know, it wasn't amazing.
As good as I was in math, perfect math SAT, I don't think I did anything on the calc.
Maybe I got a.
Let me reiterate that in case people didn't hear perfect math on the SAT.
Yeah, but I didn't.
I think he told me that on our second date.
And I was.
I don't remember that.
I think I asked you.
You didn't offer it up.
Thank you.
Thank you for not smearing me just now.
I don't.
It was me being way too nosy.
To do that.
Yeah.
I was like, hey, what'd you get on your SAT?
I barely just remembered now.
I only remember to.
You did it as a dater.
In my defense of getting shitty, nothing AP scores.
I don't think I got a single four.
I can't remember.
Maybe I got a four on the calc.
I have no memory of it.
But everything else, I think I did miserably, like a three or lower.
I don't even know.
Because it was so hard.
And it was sort of like.
For my high school AP test, they're like, you want to do that?
Okay.
Like, that was their approach.
It was like, I guess.
If you think you somehow gleaned enough information from this fucking school to do AP, go for it.
Yeah.
Have at it.
Yeah.
What about you?
Oh, now's your chance to brag.
So I got a three on my AP stats.
I did not do well on AP stats, which is funny because then I went on to take a lot of stats in college and my master's, like a lot of stats classes.
I love stats.
But for whatever reason, it didn't click for me in high school the same way.
But I did.
AP literature and AP language.
Was Spanish AP?
Because I feel like I did a Spanish.
There is a Spanish AP class.
Yeah.
And I did nothing.
Anyway, this is.
There may be some people who came to not listen to us talk about AP classes.
I also did AP Gov, but importantly, one of the most popular AP classes, AP US history.
Right.
Very, very, very popular.
Tons of people have taken AP US history.
I called it APUSH when I was in high school.
I don't know if that's what everybody calls it, but that's what I called it APUSH.
You had your own name for a class just privately?
Well, no, I mean, like everyone in my high school called it APUSH.
You made it sound like it was just you.
Well, it's APUSH.
It's like APUSH.
Yes, I did make it sound like it was just me.
Like I created this.
Yeah.
But APUS history is something that you go all across the country, and there are tens of thousands of kids that are currently taking it every single year.
And Florida now has a program.
We'll talk about the origins of this called the Florida Advanced Courses and Test.
And they just released.
Their framework for their own accelerated US history course.
Well, okay.
So, how does this work?
I don't really know how this works.
Is there like one curriculum for the nation of that?
Yeah.
So, the way that it works is AP is a college board product, basically, it's accelerated and they have agreements with colleges and universities across the nation to accept the work that's being done at the AP level course as equivalent to.
A college course.
So you get credits, you get to save money, et cetera, et cetera, as long as you score well enough on those tests.
So the way that usually College Board handles this with their AP classes is they develop what they call frameworks.
And within the framework, teachers have a lot of flexibility.
So you hit those learning objectives and these various things.
So students are prepared to take the AP test and cover all of the material there and then do all the document based questions.
Or in my case, they totally weren't.
Or you bomb them.
I remember when I took that AP calc test, I didn't because you could use the graphing calculator.
Based on the questions, I discovered a whole new world of calculator.
I was like, I didn't know you could do any of this.
It was crazy.
I was like, somebody should have taught me this.
I thought I had a good calc teacher.
I don't know.
I got an A in it, but I didn't know any of that stuff.
So, the way that the framework is from Florida, we're going to get into specifics.
It seems to be less flexible.
It's focusing on different things.
So, is what you're telling me that they said, screw you guys, we're starting our own AP with.
Yes.
Yeah.
Then there's going to be cool people doing it.
Exactly.
For some reason.
Florida said, we don't like you, College Board and AP, because you guys are too woke.
DEI.
This comes from 2022.
We'll revisit it.
I have a little video.
Oh, that was so that's the critical race theory days.
Yes, exactly.
So, this all stemmed from the college board developing an AP African American studies class.
You know, it's not good at all, but it is pretty fucking crazy that that douchebag, who I think you keep saying is from Sacramento, right?
There or something.
Christopher Ruffo, yeah.
Yeah, he went to high school.
It's amazing that he, like, the number of things he ruined for one doofus guy, like, he just, like, Changed entire curricula for people just by fear mongering on like a single phrase, word.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Critical race theory.
It's bad that that can happen and it's bad that it happened, but like it is pretty crazy.
I feel like I'm like Ollivander, like terrible.
Yes.
But great.
But great.
Yeah.
So back in 2023, College Board was developing this new AP class.
They were going to be piloting it.
And Ron DeSantis responded and said, as presented, well, his administration rather said, as presented, the content of this course is.
Inexplicably contrary to Florida law and significantly lacks educational value.
Okay.
Well, if it's contrary to Florida law, was it also like, don't say gay?
It was the Stop Woke Act, which was like, you know, anti DEI, anti critical race theory.
Oh my God.
Yeah.
And then they continued in the future, should the college board, quote, be willing to come back to the table with lawful, historically accurate content?
Lawful.
Yeah.
The Florida Department of Education will always be willing to reopen the discussion.
Shut up.
They didn't sign a name to it at all.
They didn't cite the law that they said the course violated.
They have like the bargaining power in that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So College Board does partner, you know, across the nation and stuff because they're getting ready to do this and piloting it.
And Florida basically said, like, we will not be offering this in our schools.
But yeah, for them to then say that, and the rest of the country must follow is.
Yeah.
To pretend we have the bargaining power to be like, you know, we're change your facts or we're out.
Yeah.
It's like, no.
So, why don't we do a little, little, don't make me do school?
You can't make me do school.
No, we're just, we're going to play this little video from back when this all happened.
It's weird that we're talking about this, that like it's the past.
I mean, it is, but like what?
Yeah, it was three whole years ago.
But then you think about it, it's like, oh, yeah, we're, we're, now it's DEI.
We did move on to another thing.
We're not, yeah, but it's not, it's like not critical race theory.
A classroom controversy brewing.
You know, this is, this is a theme that's very controversial and that we're seeing it all across.
The GOP legislature right now.
The office of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis rejecting a proposed advanced placement course on African American studies for high school students.
Florida's Department of Education sending this letter to the College Board Florida Department of Education.
This guy doing a bit.
Yeah.
This letter.
It was pretty good.
I know it's a newsy guy.
This is NBC News.
Yeah, it's a local affiliate.
It's a W.
So he is doing it.
I love how people are such fucking lemmings.
It's like, well, everyone sounds like this, so I got to do it.
Newscastle.
This letter.
Sorry, I can't get over here.
Department of Education sending this letter to the College Board Florida Partnership.
The Florida Department of Education does not approve the inclusion of the Advanced Placement African American Studies course in the Florida Course Code Directory.
And, quote, as presented, the content of this course is inexplicably contrary to Florida law and significantly lacks educational value.
When you have the Department of Education that does not see value or significance in African American studies, there's a very big problem.
Carla Hernandez Matz, president of the United Teachers of Dade, with choice words for the governor's office on the decision.
We believe that this is xenophobia.
We believe that this is white nationalism.
This is extremism.
The college board, which runs the advanced placement program and the SAT exam, Says the AP African American Studies course is in a rigorous multi year pilot phase and says it will release an updated course framework when it's completed.
The college board saying in part, We look forward to bringing this rich and inspiring exploration of African American history and culture to students across the country.
So let's talk a little bit more about the course that had Ron DeSantis and the GOP so scared.
Like National Review, talking about that.
That had Ron DeSantis and the GOP so scared.
Yeah.
As it said in that news clip, as the College Board responded for that particular piece, it is a multi year pilot program that they do for any new AP course that they develop.
They want to make sure that it is rigorous.
I mean, they're talking about giving students who perform well on it college credit across the nation.
I'm sorry, I misunderstood.
So this is like a new class.
Yes, this is a new class that they were developing.
Okay, I think I was assuming that Florida just took a look at it and was like, wait, because they always do that.
They're like, wait a minute.
Yeah, so they did do something like that with the US history because AP US history did do a rework at one point and Florida did not like that, but they did not go to this extreme where they said, we will not offer it.
So, 2023, they did their first pilot year and approximately 60 schools participated in that, about 600 students.
The second year was still considered a pilot year.
That was in 2024 and that was 10,741 students.
The first nationwide year just happened last year, 2025.
It doubled over 21,000 students.
Took this class.
Now, that tells me that people want to take this class, right?
Well, how many caught the woke mind virus?
I think what's also interesting is it's not just black people.
I mean, obviously, there's a high percentage of students that identify as black.
In 2025, 58% of those that went on to take the exam identified as black.
And it covers, you know, African American history, culture, perspectives throughout, you know, the decades and stuff related to that.
But what I think is super interesting is that when I looked into some of the actual experiences here, not just the demographics, not just the numbers of the students or the percentages, From progressive.org.
I know progressive, you know, bad word.
Well, it's not just the insurance company website.
No, no, no, because it's.org.
So that's what it tells you.
A teacher out of Cambridge High School in a Republican district outside of Atlanta.
This is a white teacher teaching this class.
And she said that most of her students, she's 30 students in this class, most of them are seniors who don't need this class to graduate.
They are electively taking AP African American studies because they said that they want to learn information that's restricted in other places.
Yeah.
Not just the high school, but also specifically her AP African American Studies course that she teaches are two thirds white students.
That's so cool.
She says, The most common response I get after teaching a lesson that is particularly intense or something that is not often discussed is that everybody should be taking this class.
They also say, Why didn't I know about this before?
No fucking kidding.
I love those responses because it shows that the course is doing what it needs to do and it shows the necessity of the class and that her entire class planned to take the AP exam last year.
Yeah, but they might be making it all up though.
How close are we?
Sorry, sorry thought.
Yes.
How close are we to them being like, you know what?
I think you can divide by zero.
Change your test.
You can divide by zero.
The answer is just like zero or something.
I don't know.
I bet you can.
What's the difference?
Like, why would they think the college board is like, well, they're fine at all the like sciencey math stuff, but this, they're just making stuff up.
Yeah, it is really, really frustrating.
And I mean, it's like, it's just one of those things where like we're seeing it offered to more and more schools every single year across the nation.
We're getting feedback like that.
Don't tell Ron DeSantis about 0.9 with a line over it.
He'll never get it.
He'll be like, That's not that doesn't equal one.
You're wrong.
Can't be so.
It was up to last year, it was up to 1300 high schools that were offering AP African American studies, which you know is also like pretty remarkable when you consider the entire state of Florida is not participating in this AP test.
I don't know.
I honestly have no concept of how many students or high schools there are.
I just like never thought about it.
It could be like a hundred, could be three million.
Well, okay.
So, so here's a contrast I said, you know, APUSH is one of the most popular.
AP classes that you're going to find in the entire United States.
It was offered last year at 17,000 high schools and 2,000 colleges offer credit in response to those exams, exam scores that do well.
7,000 high schools offer AP world history, 1,900 colleges extend credit for that class.
And so AP African American studies is less, but it's also only been around for a year.
So I get it.
It's also, I think, a little more politically contentious.
So That's challenging too.
But Florida decided from all of that that they're like, you know what?
We've had it with the college board.
We're tired of them saying that they can decide what an AP class is and what accelerated opportunities our students get.
So let's just create our own thing.
And they move forward with House Bill 1537 in 2023, which creates an additional accelerated pathway in Florida named the Florida Advanced Courses and Tech.
Additional.
Yes.
So they still keep it.
They still offer AP.
If they like the class.
Oh, okay.
So, and IB is another accelerated pathway that you'll hear at some schools too.
International Baccalaureate.
It's like a little irritable bowel.
Yeah.
Just part of it.
Yeah.
As of recent legislation that happened this spring, they were able to expand upon not just the accelerated path, but guarantee that Florida public colleges will accept these credits.
So, again, Florida high school students might take these classes that they are creating under this accelerated path, thinking that they are equivalent to AP.
Critical Thinking Skills Framework00:06:30
Classes.
They are not.
It might be a fine choice if you plan on staying in Florida for college, but if you plan on applying to other schools, no other school in the nation is going to recognize that as an accelerated class at all.
Yeah.
It doesn't count.
You will have to take it again in college.
Be like, I majored in propaganda from the Florida School of Bullshit.
Oh, yeah.
Well, we'll get into the curriculum aspects of it too that are concerning.
But additionally, teachers get financial incentives, they get like little bonuses.
Per student that takes the exam for AP classes and IB classes.
Teachers do?
Yeah, teachers do to try and encourage teachers to take on.
It tends to be more workload, right?
So it's not just like funding for the school, like they're actually paying directly to the teachers, from my understanding.
And so Florida is mimicking that.
So it's the exact same stipend that you would see related to like an AP class.
I also found that in their press release, Florida said that the state will provide detailed daily lesson plans.
Which are available but not required.
This is important because the way that the College Board approaches the AP classes is I said it was called a framework, right?
It was here are our learning objectives for these periods.
If we're talking about AP US history specifically, for this period of US history, you know, prior to us being a nation, you know, and the European influences and other influences and what indigenous Americans were doing at this time and et cetera, et cetera.
And you walk through all the different eras of this country.
I'm not sure you'd like to take this class.
Oh, I mean, honestly, what you could do is this stuff is publicly available.
You can get the College Board's framework for.
A push and like kind of just do it on your own if you want.
I think that'd be really fun.
Like a high school teacher.
Yeah, to walk you through it and stuff.
Yeah.
And then I don't pay attention and they get mad at me and then I get detention and stuff.
Just like the normal thing.
Oh, there you go.
Yeah.
And then not pass your AP test.
Yeah.
And I don't waste the $85 that you had to spend on it.
Yeah.
So the reason why I say this daily lesson plan is important is because the way that the college board has approached it is yes, there's a framework, there are specific modules and learning objectives, but then they give teachers a lot of flexibility.
To reach those objectives in the way that they think is best.
Maybe you lean on their recommended sources and readings and stuff, but teachers come in with a lot of expertise themselves.
And so they might have other things that they want to emphasize, that they want to pull in, that they think is going to make their students feel more prepared for the AP test that they feel like demonstrates the material better.
But when you talk about Florida saying, here's your framework, and also we'll give you daily lesson plans, and also you're going to get paid the same amount.
As a bonus stipend, that you would if you were doing an AP test.
Now we're talking about, you know, like that's like a path of least resistance almost.
But it means that the Florida Department of Education is not just offering a broad framework, they are explicitly teaching your class now what they want your class to be learning.
And that's scary to me.
I think going to just being in Florida is pretty scary, actually, now that you're back up.
But yeah, going to school in Florida, being in Florida, all that, very scary.
So, Florida got their feet wet with college algebra in some high schools last year.
This doesn't have an AP counterpart.
So, this is not in direct conflict with the dashboard.
We're making our own.
We're going to practice with something easy.
Right.
It's an accelerated college algebra class.
Accelerated counting.
Start there.
I guess it gives you college credit for a college algebra class, which could meet your math requirement, maybe.
I don't know.
I think all the idiot MAGAs were like, this is the highest math we've ever heard of.
Like, I don't.
They're saying there's math above this, but what would that even be?
There's no way.
Yeah, yeah.
But AP US History is their next one.
They're like, let's go all in.
As I mentioned, they just released the curriculum.
So, from the press release itself, Florida continues to lead the way in expanding access to rigorous, high quality, advanced coursework for all students, said Commissioner of Education Anastasios Camusas.
The fact US History framework underscores our commitment to instruction grounded in the full scope of our nation's history.
While ensuring materials are free from ideological bias or indoctrination.
Red flag, red flag, red flag for me.
The FACT courses ensure Florida students have access to academically rigorous, transparent, and high quality advanced pathways, said Ryan Petty, chair of the State Board of Education.
The FACT U.S. History Framework provides a thorough and balanced study of our nation's past, grounded in primary sources, pin in that, and factual accuracy.
It represents an important step toward restoring academic integrity in the classroom after years of uneven and at times, Ideologically driven instruction.
Our goal is simple equip students with the knowledge and critical thinking skills they need to succeed in college careers and civic life.
I encourage districts and charter schools to participate in the pilot of this course.
And that was for algebra.
No, this is the press release for US history.
And it goes on a little bit later.
These courses are designed to provide alternatives to existing options like advanced placement that consistently embed critical race theory and DEI into materials.
This is the official press release from the Department of Education in Florida.
These fucking idiots.
They're so dumb.
They see a fucking anti woke onslaught about critical race theory and they change their fucking schools over it.
Like that's how reactionary, dramatic, thin skin these idiots are.
Especially like when they're talking about, you know, they really want to make sure they equip their students with critical thinking skills.
Then why are you so afraid of the material?
Like, if you're equipping them with critical thinking skills and something is wrong in your mind at the AP learning objectives or whatever, they should be able to parse through that.
Sounds like a you problem.
So, feedback starts rolling in after this framework is released and this press release comes out from an article I read about this.
But several critics said the framework outlined a poor quality class with a history professor at Princeton University.
It's Kevin Cruz, if folks follow him on Blue Sky.
Calling it a quote Florida man version of AP.
Sure.
Pseudo-History and Missteps00:06:34
And I thought that was so good.
Let's start with the only textbook recommendation in the framework as compared to the 21 recommended texts from College Board's AP class.
I was like, nobody could read that many books in a lifetime.
The one book that Florida recommends in their framework, The Art of the Deal.
It's not recommended by.
The college board in their APUS history class.
So they recommend Wilfred M. McClay's Land of Hope, an invitation to the American story, as their textbook.
Jesus Christ.
Wilfred M. McClay, wouldn't you know it, serves as the Victor Davis Hansen Chair in Classical History and Western Civilization at Hillsdale College.
Oh my God.
So this is another Hillsdale takeover.
We talked about it with New College and Hillsdale getting their paws in the board and literally rewiring that entire school's existence.
And completely changing everything about it.
This is another way that we are getting Hillsdale influence directly into Florida students.
We got Hillsdale again.
It happened again, everybody.
McClay has said that he wrote this book specifically to counteract Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States.
Why tell it from the point of view of the people when you can tell it from the point of view of the fucking rich oligarchs, white Christian Americans, and what they want?
His whole thought was like, well, it was too negative.
Like, People's History of the United States, like, it was too focused on the missteps.
The few missteps that our country has taken.
And I wanted to write a story that centered the positive message.
And then I'll recognize the missteps, but they're just a couple little blips along the way.
Will you recognize the missteps?
He's like, the one misstep of we didn't Reagan enough.
Yeah.
He's exactly what you would think he is, right?
It's everything just ticks those boxes.
He's an older white man who has this idea of history that is naive at best.
And willful, like willful misinformation at worst.
Propagandistic.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Based out of a conservative Christian college.
I think he was a fellow with the Ethics Public and Policy Center.
I want to be a fellow somewhere.
I know what you mean.
Can someone make me a fellow and then, hello, fellow?
You know, do they greet each other like that?
Like, I don't know.
That would be nice.
Yeah.
I want to be a fellow.
Maybe not with Wilfred, though.
I'd be like, I want to be a fellow.
I think I want to be a fellow.
You know, like, be so funny.
Everybody would be laughing.
So we start off with, The textbook being a concern.
And again, it's recommended.
It's not assigned and it is a framework.
There's nothing else.
But there's nothing else.
There's nothing else.
They do give other sources.
We'll talk about what some of those sources are.
You could just think about it.
Yeah.
Or you can just pick the paragraphs that we put in here already.
U.S. history probably be.
But I was looking through the framework.
It's not that long.
It's 214 pages, as opposed to the framework that you get with College Board, which is over 500 pages.
And again, meant to be a framework, not a full curriculum.
And again, 21 recommended textbooks that you can use out of College Board to help support their framework versus the one of this 214 page document from Florida.
But this particular thing jumped out at me just because we were talking about on OA this week, discussing progressives from the late 1910s, right?
With Woodrow Wilson and everything.
And this idea of tying the progressives of that era to the progressives of this era and saying they're one and the same.
You mean our king, our God, Woodrow Wilson?
Yes, exactly.
The father of progressivism.
First came Woodrow Wilson, then came AFC.
Every night we do a little prayer for Woodrow Wilson.
We're like, we love you so much, sir.
Good night, Mr. President.
And you didn't take APUS history?
I think I probably did, actually.
Do you remember even learning about this in regular US history?
I'm sure you're about to say.
Okay, fair.
I do not remember.
I personally don't remember learning about this, at least being a key part.
I'm going to tell you.
Oh, okay.
From Fact, the Florida Advanced Blah, Blah, Blah courses and tests, there's an entire section as part of this period of history that's just labeled Progressive Immigration Restriction, Race Science, and Eugenics.
Yeah, Matt touched on that, huh?
Right.
So here I have it in this, like, Curriculum framework now that they're going to be teaching this is a key part of this period of time in the US history.
Okay.
And it says progressives' beliefs in paternalism and the distinction between civilized and barbarous peoples led them to embrace racial theories of human superiority, such as the Teutonic germ theory, adopt strict immigration legislation against Asians and Southern and Eastern Europeans, and pursue a eugenicist vision of scientific human engineering that would have eliminated undesirable and unfit persons from civilized society.
Question Are they saying that was bad though?
They are, but I think that they're doing it.
You hear these guys?
They wanted to restrict immigration.
Oh, man, that's us.
Damn it.
But here's the thing I think what they're trying to do is just get the word progressive in there and link it to these things.
I know, but they're linking it and saying this is bad, and it's also the stuff we currently like.
No, but so here's the thing because it's not saying strict immigration legislation against all people, it specifically says against Asians and Southern and Eastern Europeans.
And it's focusing in on those particular racial groups, right?
Because The Asian racial group, broadly speaking, that is the group that was behind Students for Fair Admissions, right?
That when SCOTUS overturned affirmative action.
Yeah, or at least was used by whoever was doing that.
Yeah, Edward Bloom.
Yeah.
That doesn't sound super Asian of a name, but it could be.
He's not.
He just searches for plaintiffs.
Yeah.
No joke.
Yeah.
But it clearly is just like a way to indoctrinate their high schoolers that anytime you hear progressive, you think about race science.
Okay.
You think about eugenics.
Funny because when we did the OA, Yeah.
Opening arguments, vivid response, talking about Clarence Thomas.
And he gave apparently this exact.
I didn't know.
I don't know.
Were you sitting on this or something?
Because, like, this sounds like wherever Clarence Thomas got his weird bullshit about Woodrow Wilson sounds like from this.
Because I never heard of that.
What I was speculating was, I don't think Clarence Thomas came up with this.
Right, right, right.
I remember that.
Because I just don't think, you know, not that he couldn't.
I'm sure he could if he wanted to.
But, like, most of the time, I find that, and on this show, especially, you find that they have some shared source.
They start, like, you start hearing the same.
Shared Sources of Claims00:02:34
Weird pseudo historical claims, you know?
It could be, you know, that Wilfred Guys story.
It's got a common, I think it just has a common ancestor.
Like somebody, yeah, could be that, could be, I don't know what it is, but it's funny because I just hadn't really, I don't know about you, but I hadn't really heard this particular bullshit, you know?
I hadn't either, no.
Yeah, it's somebody's fresh MAGA bullshit, you know, fresh anti intellectual pseudo history, I guess.
Yeah, and it feels like the more that we hear about it tells me that they're scared about the progressives' potential.
Well, kind of, or I think they just cook this shit up in a lab somewhere.
They're just like, they get, it's got some assholes who vaguely know something about history, but then just use it to like, What storyline can we pick out?
What pseudo history can we draw to make it seem like the progressives were the bad guys or whatever it is?
And they're like, oh my God, I've got it.
It's first off, Woodrow Wilson.
Say it with me Woodrow P. Wilson.
I don't know if that's his middle initial.
No, remember Woodrow's his middle name.
Yeah, but he also had another.
Thomas Woodrow Wilson.
Oh, I thought he had another one in there.
No, that was another guy.
Oh, yeah.
Another Woody.
When we went on our Woody hunt, it's AV US history all over again.
But for comparison's sake, because I don't remember really learning about that at all.
When I learned about like the 1910s and stuff, we did a whole election of 1912 thing that was really fun.
Oh, cool.
Yeah.
The teacher had us do like a mock election kind of thing.
Now, I don't think I learned anything from it, but that's on me, you know, because actually later on I read Doris Kearns Goodwin.
That's the thing.
I don't know if there was a way to make history interesting to me back then.
I'm not sure.
I don't blame my teachers or anything.
I lament it because later on, you know, I was probably like, oh gosh, by now it's been almost eight, nine years or something that I read Doris Kearns Goodwin about Teddy Roosevelt.
She has a book about that and all that.
And it talked about this election.
I was like, Jesus, this is the most fascinating thing.
Like it's so fucking interesting.
And I think my brain just probably wasn't ready for it back then.
Like it's hard as a high school kid, like you don't really have the context, or at least I didn't, you know, for a lot of this stuff.
Like you don't really know like, wait, why would I care about this?
Why is it important?
Until you see like kind of what happens in the real world a little bit.
And then you're like, oh my.
God, I want to know what happened in the real world 100 something years ago.
Super interesting.
But what I was seeing, because I, again, I don't remember learning about this stuff.
I remember talking about John Muir.
I remember talking about Teddy Roosevelt, right?
Like, elements of that.
But there's also the journalists.
Muckraking.
But those are the bad ones.
But there's also really good, you know, like Ida B. Wells.
Understanding Racism in History00:11:41
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I do remember kind of learning about that a little bit.
But when I read this book, I was like, man, this is so fucking cool.
Oh, man, what a time.
Back then, there was this thing called magazines.
That were like podcasts in that there was a huge rush for them.
Like, people were like, We need new journalism.
We need new writers.
We need new whatever.
And you could do a startup that's like a magazine startup.
And then you could get awesome journalists to write stuff.
And they would be like, This is great.
We all love this.
You just can't do that now.
It's just some shitty fucking TikTok, Substack, nonsense.
Yeah, that's like the best, I guess, of it, of all the nonsense.
Like, it's still not, I don't think it's good, but like, it's the best.
It was a cool thing to learn about.
Yeah.
But meanwhile, I was like, is this something that is being taught just more now?
And it wasn't being taught like when I took APUS history, or maybe I forgot.
You're trying to get the basis of comparison for the fact.
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
So, fact is teaching this.
What is the APUS history class teaching this?
What does this look like in the framework for College Board?
And I was taking a glance at like some study guides and stuff from College Board about this.
And they do call out some of these contradictions of progressives, namely immigration and race.
But yeah, like at the time.
And again, in case people didn't listen to the Oh, yeah.
Like the capital P progressive movement of that time is a very different thing from now.
Than the progressives of the 2010s and 2020s.
But the way that it was set up there, it really emphasized that, yes, this existed because the movement was so large.
There were actually like different groups within this movement.
Of course.
And some of them felt this way, not all of them, right?
And so it was like much more specific.
It wasn't the progressives as this entire monolith that believed in race science, right?
It was this particular element.
And they named like some of the elements that those folks had in common, like upper middle class and sort of these other things.
Tended to rally around some of these things.
And so, the way that the AP test approaches this is actually a really good essay question, right?
We can talk about when you have a broad political movement and it's accomplishing some really amazing things, but then you have a group within that movement that wants to accomplish some things that are not so great, tackling that and like, what did that look like?
And how did that tension perpetuate in that movement?
And what were the impacts of that politically, potentially, or historically downstream and stuff?
So, just some really interesting things.
But from what I'm seeing from Fact, it's more of this movement believed this.
It's just like a gotcha.
Like you have to memorize, like, owns.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Well, you also have to be able to say, like, on the test, you have to be able to say, like, well, Republicans were the party that got rid of slavery.
Like you just have to say, like, it's that every time.
Party of Lincoln.
Every single time.
It also, throughout the framework, leans heavily into the Christian faith.
I think I searched.
Christian, and it came up 40 times.
I mean, that's nothing wrong with learning about that.
Not necessarily.
Force in American politics.
But what about your primary sources being verses from the Bible?
Yeah, well, that's nothing.
That's problematic.
What does that have to do with U.S. history, like at all?
Because they strongly believe that the founders and religion.
Oh, they're trying to teach the founding as like a religious thing?
A lot of it, yeah.
And it's not just that.
We get into the lack of discussion regarding racism when we're talking about slavery.
Adam Rothman from Georgetown University commented on this.
He said that particularly in early U.S. history, not talking about racism was, quote, striking.
The word racism never appears in the entire framework.
While the topic appears in the first unit of AP U.S. history and then in numerous parts of that course, it's kind of important.
He says, quote, you can't really understand the contradiction between freedom and slavery at the founding of the United States in the late 18th century without some grasp of the emergence of racist views about black people.
You can't understand the founding without knowing about racism.
Nope.
Just purely like as non-wokest as possible.
That's just a fact.
Like it was a major part of the founding.
It was a source of compromise and contention among the, you know, northern and southern states.
Like it was like there's so much, so much about race to do with that.
Like to not even teach it.
Well, and not just that, from some other feedback that I was reading through, within this framework, they try to portray the founders as fundamentally opposed to slavery.
What?
And completely simplifying their views.
So, Annette Gordon Reed, she's a Harvard historian.
She's the leading scholar on Thomas Jefferson in the United States, basically.
And she said that Jefferson believed that if enslaved people were freed, they should be expatriated.
Like, get them out of here.
Then they don't belong in America.
George Washington waited until his death to free enslaved people that he owned.
Quote, each of these people had political power that could have been deployed against slavery.
This presentation seems directed at explaining away their inaction.
They also say that the Constitution is an anti slavery document.
They try and make that case in the framework.
That's weird because I don't think slavery was abolished in 1776.
No, most historians view the Constitution as a compromise.
Yeah.
And basically something that got the abolitionists to be quiet for a few decades and halt the momentum to freeing enslaved people.
Just it's this whitewashing of this whole thing.
Yeah, it's interesting because if you look at the founding of this country as like a really good thing, which I mean, arguably you could look at the revolution, the founding as a good thing.
I don't know, revolutions and self government is usually good, although ultimately it leads to empire and other stuff in our case.
But like, It is an interesting question of like, yeah, there were compromises that had to be made in order to get the support of the Southern states in order to fight a Revolutionary War and do all that.
Like, it's interesting to talk about that.
It's stupid to not talk about that, you know?
And I think also these morons, these MAGA morons, I think they get the idea that, like, what the wokest do is they teach history and the whole time is they say, like, and Thomas Jefferson had slaves and then we all go, like, we all hiss.
Like, that's what the class is.
Like, it's just like a.
A group hate session on the old white men who had.
It's not at all.
It's just you learn that they had slaves, and you might be like, boy, that doesn't seem good.
You know, there's not, but it's, you just learn about it.
It's not like wokest propaganda where everybody in the class write an essay about how slavery was so bad.
Like it's just simple minded.
That's not really what the curriculum is.
You learn about it.
You probably would think it's bad if you learn anything about it.
I would think you would think it's bad.
Right.
But it's not like, This woke moralistic preaching.
That's not what it is.
But they can't even trust their students to take this idea that slaves came over in 1619.
They say, and this is a factual error according to Rothman out of Georgetown University, who I mentioned before, they say that indentured servants were brought to the Americas in 1619.
They will not call them slaves, which is just inaccurate.
And so they can't even trust their students with this idea that people brought over slaves and that Thomas Jefferson owned slaves.
It's silly.
Yeah.
So, beyond that, like a little more of a modern element that comes up in this class as well.
The way that they characterize Roe v. Wade in this is really interesting.
They say that Roe v. Wade was a ruling that, quote, removed a contentious topic from the democratic process.
What?
That's how they're characterizing it in this.
And then it seemed to praise the 2022 overturning of Roe as, quote, returning the matter to regulation by the states via the democratic process.
Even the language from the key facts of this section of that framework, it lists Roe v. Wade as a key fact from this era that they're talking about.
Supreme Court decision that ruled a Texas law banning abortion was unconstitutional, granting women the right to abort their babies in the first trimester.
The language choice there.
In the first trimester, that's not even what it was, too.
And abort their babies.
Yeah.
That is so loaded there and absolutely transparent what they're trying to do.
Yeah.
And again, Real history classes would tell you that, like, well, the argument was from some people that you needed to leave it to the states.
And, like, there is a serious argument that did the court by jumping the gun and kind of taking it away from the Democratic process, was that ultimately good?
I think I would have said 100% yes.
And I probably still say 100% yes.
There's like a serious argument that, like, I don't know, maybe that ultimately in the long run is what led to this campaign to get rid of it.
You know, I don't know if that's true, but like, It's at least an argument you could look at.
Good history courses do look at those things.
They would look and say, well, it was a bit of a stretch by the court.
I don't think it was crazy, but it was a bit of a reach.
It was a progressive reach by the court to guarantee something that wasn't explicitly said.
It was, you know, it was based on some other stuff.
Ultimately, I think it was the right decision, but history courses are not going to teach you this was great that there was Roe v. Wade.
We love it because we're a woke.
We love Roe v. Wade.
It's bad.
We think you should abort children even earlier than the first trimester.
Like, that's not how it is.
Like, they're responding to something that doesn't exist.
Here's how they characterize Reagan's economy in this section as well Reaganomics and economic recovery.
President Reagan's economic policies included substantial tax cuts in 1981, as well as deregulation during his time in office, while the Federal Reserve continued to restrain growth in the money supply.
Yeah, I mean, that's kind of true.
That part's true.
Economic growth increased significantly, succeeding in creating 20 million jobs, while inflation declined from 13.5% to 4%.
Despite ballooning deficits, in part due to increased defense spending, GNP grew enough to end stagflation.
Proponents argued that Reagan's supply side economic approach restored prosperity, while critics pointed to increased national debt.
And it's just like such.
Yeah.
Like, first of all, Why I'm getting a huge paragraph about this and like the key facts of this section when Roe v. Wade was literally a single sentence is crazy to me with percentages and statistics and stuff.
Like, what are we doing here?
And then to also then take a full entire paragraph to skip over a whole lot more that was problematic regarding Reaganomics and the fallout.
I don't know.
It bugged me.
Or how they set up this sentence.
Analyze the domestic transformations of the 1990s and early 2000s, comparing centrist reforms under President Clinton.
With the contested 2000 election and the later financial collapse.
And it's just so funny to me.
Like, the only name, the only president name in that sentence is Clinton.
So, the way it's like framed there, it's like the reforms that President Clinton made, it almost is insinuating, you know, that it was connected to the 2000 election and the later financial collapse.
Like, it all kind of stemmed from the Clinton reforms.
Yeah.
Weird.
Weird, weird, weird.
And, you know, even the early days of the country before we were a country, It focuses, of course, on Western civilization and influences from that.
It focuses on the Protestant Reformation and how it gave rise to certain democratic ideas, but really, really, really glosses over all of the indigenous history.
FOIA Requests for Records00:06:02
There is very, very little mention of that.
I don't think any of us are surprised to hear that, but it is really sad.
And there is a historian out of the University of Connecticut, Manisha Sinha, who said that this was a dated approach to US history.
Quote, especially in a place like Florida with a long history of Native presence and major encounters and wars.
And to just ignore all the people that lived there before is sad.
There should be a whole course on Native American history.
I wish, because I don't know anything about that.
I think it'd be really interesting because there's a lot to it.
Obviously, there's like so many different tribes and all that stuff.
Like it'd be really interesting to learn about.
I don't remember learning about much of it.
Yeah, I remember learning about it in elementary school.
And I don't remember learning about it much after that.
Yeah.
I remember it in like kind of a deep way.
I mean, because we like learned about a bunch of different tribes, certainly not all of them, but like, yeah, we did.
It's possible I didn't pay attention.
Always a possibility.
Take anything I say about what happened in a school with a grain of salt.
And then just thematically, there are a lot of differences.
You know, I'll link the full framework if people want to poke around.
Thematically, Florida is focused on political and constitutional history, economics, political economy, American identity.
National character, foreign policy.
And the AP course thematically is focused on American and national identity, politics and power, American and regional culture and social structures.
And so we're missing a lot of cultural impact, social impact from the fact framework.
How's their algebra class?
Like that, I wanna see.
Did somebody fuck up?
I don't see any metrics yet, but they do have that available on their website.
So I can include the link if folks are interested in that too.
There's a fact sheet, policies regarding their calculators, the test design summary.
Oh, there's some sample items, the answer key.
I really do think they picked like the lowest hanging fruit to just be like, okay, we can definitely not fuck up algebra.
Like somebody, you say, hey, Bill, you know algebra, right?
Yeah.
Okay.
Do that, and then that'll you know, we'll start there.
Yeah, we'll start there, and we'll just hide behind that for a little bit, and then we'll do this U.S. history.
We'll do our one of our big swings here.
I just love that.
Like, we're gonna do a trial AP algebra.
Yeah, when the AP African American Studies class came out in 2023, National Review did a whole thing about like, and they won't release who's part of this and who's contributing to this, etc., etc.
And it was like, well, they're still developing it, right?
Like, this is the very, very beginnings of this, it's not even being offered to students at this point.
Yes, and they'll probably get.
Death threats from you fucking people.
So don't release whoever did it.
But it's funny because here I have conservatives whining about not knowing who contributed to putting together that framework.
And there's nothing on this document talking about who contributed to this framework.
I don't know anybody who has, no one has been mentioned or cited or anything.
I emailed the press office for the Department of Education in Florida asking if information would be released regarding the contributors.
They have not responded to me.
If they do not respond to me by the end of this week, I will be submitting a FOIA request.
Because I want all the emails.
Does California do that?
Yeah.
Isn't it Florida?
No, but they're a state entity.
Like they're public.
Does Florida have their own FOIA law?
Does FOIA apply to state governments, you're saying?
It might be under like a different name, but it's the same premise because California is the same way.
Yeah, but I think it's because California has a FOIA type law.
I don't think it's public records law out of Florida, sunshine law.
Yeah.
So grants any person the right to inspect or copy records made or received by state governments.
It's a minor thing, but it's not.
Yeah, okay.
Federal law is not applicable to.
Okay, I see what you're saying.
That's me.
Shorthanding my discussion of it.
The reason I ask is there anything about having to be like a Florida resident or anything?
Because I can imagine if you had a FOIA type law, state FOIA type law, it wouldn't be insane to be like, well, we don't want people from other states getting our documents.
I don't think so.
I mean, I was able to get stuff out of Oklahoma.
Using whatever their law is?
Yeah.
All right.
Well, I'm rooting for you.
I was just wondering.
I'm going to do it.
I'm going to get stuff out of them.
Now, in terms of, you know, this would be their pilot year coming up.
So they are asking for schools to participate.
In their pilot year of their Florida man, US history.
I just would love to be a fly on the wall.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, we'll get back to you on that.
Yeah.
You know, we might.
They have five more days to volunteer, and a few school districts have explicitly said that they would not be participating.
So shout out to them.
I don't know their reasoning, but good for them.
Probably because it's fucking stupid.
It's Orange County, Osceola County, and Lake County.
And Seminole County Public Schools said the course was under consideration, but the education department has also not shared with any news organization.
Uh, how many of the school districts have signed on, and yeah, and they have five more days to volunteer to do so.
So we'll see.
Get on it, you know.
Tickets are selling fast to this, so yeah, you know, we're gonna run out of PDFs if you don't, you know.
So get your spot, schools.
I can't wait for listeners to check out this framework, um, because it is just shocking.
Yeah, you might as well teach the history of Middle Earth, like it's pretty much if you just want to make something up, yeah, you know, yeah.
I would take an AP Middle Earth class before I would take this.
Well, I'm going to start studying because I need to be able to pass this fact test.
Yeah.
I want to know the real history of the United States.
So I'm going to get on it.
Can't wait to learn about Reagan, you know, riding on a horse with Jesus or whatever the fuck.
But no, that's thanks for looking into that.
Yeah, I guess the lesson is when you try to teach actual history involving anything that conservatives are deathly afraid of, they will start their own fucking school system about it.
Shocking Middle Earth Curriculum00:00:43
Freaking whiny babies.
Jesus Christ.
Yeah.
I mean, Florida, that's your tax dollars at work, too.