Tavares, FL March 21, 2018
Teams of 50+ activists and Florida parents spent most of 2017 reviewing K-12 Florida textbooks in subjects like social studies and history to identify excess liberal or religious bias. We obtained their Oct. 2017 Interim Report of "Objectionable Materials" which is discussed below.
What they found should disturb ANY parent on how their children are being manipulated with teaching materials aimed at biasing their children's world view towards an objectionable liberal viewpoint.
This linked report provides a good overview of the contents:
"This FLCA Florida curriculum analysis identifies specific objectionable materials found in Florida schools by Citizen Watchdog committees. The assessment was completed by teams in Collier, Lee, Charlotte, Volusia, Brevard, Marion, Lake and Okaloosa counties.
Not all of these materials are in every county but they are in most for 2 reasons:
1) Almost all have been adopted by the Florida Department of Education adoption Process.
2) All Florida School Districts buy from the same major sources: Pearson/Prentice PLC, McGraw Hill, and Houghton, Mifflin, Harcourt. Pearson claims to have an 80% Market share of K-12 Instructional Materials in the United States.
The 4 major subject matter categories are:
* English Language Arts
- Pornography (violations of 847.012)
- FL DOE Sunshine Reader List criteria (effectively bans classical literature)
* Social Studies
- Reconstructed History (violations of FS1003.42)
- Religious Indoctrination (promotes Islam vs. Christianity FS 1002.206)
- Political Indoctrination (violates FS 1006.31 factual, balanced and objective)
- Science (2017-2018 current adoption cycle--work in progress)
- Common Core Math Textbooks (2018-19 next adoption cycle)"
Since early 2017, teams of 50+ Florida activists and volunteers from other states have researched textbooks used in several K-12 Florida school districts for accuracy, excess religious bias, and other "objectionable" materials.
Studies like this already were completed in Texas (by Truth in Texas Textbooks) and California.
WATCH this 2015 video by one of the reviewers, Deidre Clemons, which clearly explains the concerns of INFORMED parents conducting this review.
Some of the most blatant examples reported include:
"English 3: Florida Collections– by Houghton, Mifflin, Harcourt Published-2013, is a collection of short
stories. The overwhelming content of these types of stories on victimization, racism and bigotry are not
teaching our children to be good citizens, but victims of an oppressive culture and with moral values that
“anything goes”.
Provided was "a sample of req’d reading in AP English Syllabus in Collier County. It contains many, many
stories teaching our children they are victims; stories of marital infidelity, promiscuity, masturbation; last
thoughts as bullet enters the brain of a robber; rituals of sadism, masochism, customs of intercourse.."
AP Literature in Collier County contains books and short stories. Examples include stories of prostitution.
Lesbianism and gang rape, “The Women of Brewster Place”, The Awakening”, “The Bluest Eye”, “Clockwork
Orange”, etc. These materials usurp the family’s responsibility to teach family values.
The Truth about Alice, Author: Jennifer Mathieu
"This book is still on the Florida top 10 recommended list for middle schoolers and on the Sunshine Reader List for 6 thgraders and up. The book glorifies teen sex as standard practice and perpetuated the notion that children are victims. It violates FS 847.012. By most moral standards, it is certainly age-inappropriate for 11 year olds. The public school system should NOT be promoting this material."
HERE is a 20 page example of a review of just ONE Pearson Florida edition 2018 US History book
"The five authors and textbook coordinator seem to have limited landscape view of history and certainly not of AP History; one
author (Randy Roberts) has a sports and popular culture focus; other authors have many published books concerning social issues and social injustice"
Religious Indoctrination
"The 25 Books with unacceptable Islamic religious indoctrination were found in 64 of the 67 Florida Counties. Most of these books have been validated in Collier, Lee and Marion County so far. The likelihood is very high they exist through-out many of the districts because they all buy from the same sources."
Book Review: My World History - 6th grade
This book comes from a British company, Pearson PLC, with a record of failed performance and law suits that is pages long. The company's major stockholders include the Arabic Banking Corporation, and the Government of Libya. This book contains 31 pages, Chapter 18, on Islam. Never mentioned is Jihad, marriage of up to 4 women, female mutilation, the Jizyah, death penalty for gays, or growing their religion by bloody conquest. The fact that Muhammed personally murdered and led murdering troops to convert other religions to Islam or face death was not mentioned, nor was the fact that the youngest of his many wives, Aisha, was 9 years old. Instead, the entire chapter portrays Islam as just another nice religion like Christianity or Judaism, and in fact, superior to them.
Conclusion:
This is just the first interim report. More review work is going on related to Science and Math textbooks, plus another 50+ volunteers are being trained NOW to review more Florida textbooks.
I will be following up on specific reports and which books are actually in use at the Lake County, FL School District.
You can see my own Fact Sheet on Islam bias in World History books used by the Lake County School District awhile back. At the time, classes were dedicating THREE weeks to whitewashed versions of Muslim "history", but after I reported it, they reduced the coverage to one week. They may have changed textbooks recently, so I will follow up.
If you would like to help the Florida Citizens Alliance review Florida K-12 textbooks, contact Keith Flaugh of the FCA at [email protected] .
If you have kids or grandkids in a Florida school, read the full report linked below and examine their textbooks to see if they are on the list reviewed or contain similar objectionable content. Then give public input at the School Board meeting and demand changes. However, the school could be stuck with a book becuase it was approved by the FL Dept. of Education, so demand they remove use of the content from the official curriculum plans for the classes.
Additionally, review ALL outside websites or separate "instructional materials" used by the teachers, which could contain even more biased information.
Vance Jochim
FiscalRangers.com
References:
- The Oct. 2017 Interim Report of Objectionable Materials (in selected Florida K-12 student textbooks)
- Website of the Florida Citizens Alliance: http://floridacitizensalliance.com/liberty/
- Website of Truth in Texas Textbooks which provides the training for review teams in selected states.
- Another similar report was produced by the Christian Action Network: "The Christian Action Network has sent 500 school superintendents a report showing that many textbooks are biased against Israel and the West while whitewashing radical Islam. The report, authored by Citizens for National Security, examines 200 quotes from 30 textbooks used in Florida.
- Book: "Indoctrination: How 'Useful Idiots' Are Using Our Schools to Subvert American Exceptionalism" by Kyle Olson.
===