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Florida Governor Ron DeSantis previously announced a 3-day civics training program for teachers.
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Some teachers who attended say they worry the training is one-sided, The Washington Post reported.
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The training said it is a “misconception” that “the Founders desired a strict separation of church and state.”
New civics training for Florida teachers promotes inaccurate ideas about the separation of church and state, the teachers told The Washington Post.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and the Florida Department of Education announced they will host 10 regional 3-day civics professional learning training sessions for 2,500 teachers this summer to accommodate more than 2,500 teachers through the summer of 2022. Training includes a $700 stipend.
The FDOE said the training would “align with revised civics and government standards,” but some teachers have raised concerns about the instructions.
During a news conference Thursday, DeSantis said the new civics was pushing back the “awakened indoctrination” of children and said the state’s children were learning “real history.”
“We are blatantly promoting civics and history that is accurate and is not trying to push an ideological agenda,” he said.
According to the Post, the training included the phrase that it is a “misconception” that “the Founders desired a strict separation of church and state.”
“My takeaway from the training is that civics education in the state of Florida right now is geared toward pushing some particular viewpoints,” Broward County teacher Richard Judd told the Post. “The thesis they defended is that there is no real separation of church and state.”
Judd told Post trainers that teachers were told, “This is the way you should think.”
DeSantis has recently pushed for legislation that would limit what students can learn or discuss about history, race, gender and sexuality.
Presentation slides from the training, which were obtained by The Miami Herald through a public records request, feature graphics illustrating that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson opposed slavery without mentioning that they owned slaves.
Barbara Segal, a 12th-grade government teacher at Fort Lauderdale High School, told the Tampa Bay Times that the training was “very biased.”
“There was a very strong Christian fundamentalist way of looking at different quotes and different documents. That was concerning,” Segal said.
Anna Fusco, president of the Broward Teachers Union, told the Post that some teachers in attendance told her they were told to present only “one side” of the story.
“Then they slipped into a Christian values piece, ignoring the fact that this country is made up of so many different cultures and religions,” Fusco said.
Read the original article on Business Insider
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