Get ready to make room for Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels along with the multiplication tables, as the House has voted up Senate legislation requiring communist history to be taught in Florida schools.
SB 1264, previously passed by a 25-7 vote in the Senate, is similar enough to Chuck Brannan's companion measure HB 1349 ("History and Instruction of Political and Socio-economic Systems") to where the House sponsor had no problem using Senate language.
Both versions require students in traditional public and charter K-12 schools to receive instruction on the history of communism beginning in the 2026-27 academic year in what is billed as an age-appropriate and developmentally-appropriate way.
Brannan notes that nothing in the bill says that kindergarteners would be taught about the depredations of communism, but it's unclear at what age they would learn about the Soviet Union, Cuba, China, and other collectivist police states.
The bill would also compel the creation of a museum of history of communism, create the Institute for Freedom in Americas at Miami Dade College, and rename the Adam Smith Center for Study of Economic Freedom as the Adam Smith Center for Economic Freedom.
"Totalitarian regimes," per Brannan, would also be covered in the bill.
There is a key party split on these bills among actual voters, meanwhile.
Polling conducted by Sachs Media found Republicans were overwhelmingly supportive (74%) of an effort to teach K-12 students about the "horrors of communism." By comparison, only 41% of Democrats believe kids need a crash course on Soviet genocide.
To that end, Democrats pushed for more detail on the bill, with Angola and Haiti coming up in questions, and the sponsor saying "totalitarianism would encompass that also."
A series of Democratic amendments were considered Tuesday.
One trying to bring in "McCarthyism" from Rep. Angie Nixon was summarily rejected.
A Rep. Ashley Gantt provision to explicitly include "communist policies of Russia and the spread of communist ideologies throughout Europe including the roots of the Soviet Union" was likewise rejected.
A second Gantt amendment stipulating the "Department of Education shall ensure that instruction on communism shall be taught at any K-12 school that receives public funding including funding via vouchers" likewise failed.
Gantt scored a hat trick with her third rejected amendment, saying the "Department of Education shall establish curriculum standards to be used in grades K-12 that demonstrate the dangers of the rhetoric and actions of the January 6, 2021, insurrection attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election and how such rhetoric and actions may create a pathway to communism."
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