RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/gov-desantis-proposes-plan-to-bolster-floridas-civics-curricula-denounces-critical-race-theory/

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on Wednesday proposed putting $106 million in pandemic-related federal funding toward the state’s civics curricula — $17 million of which would be earmarked for developing civics curricula with “foundational concepts” and not “unsanctioned narratives like critical race theory.”

“Our schools are supposed to give people a foundation of knowledge, not supposed to be indoctrination centers, where you’re trying to push specific ideologies,” DeSantis said at a news conference in Naples, Fla.

“There is no room in classrooms for things like critical race theory,” the Republican governor said.

Critical race theory “presupposes that racism is embedded within society and institutions.” The theory’s implementation in classrooms nationwide has drawn outcry from parents, some of whom have received emails from their children’s schools about “Decentering Whiteness at Home” or have elementary-school aged children who have been read “a book about whiteness” that suggests “color matters” and encourages them to dissect “the painful truth” about their “own family,” regarding potential racist behavior.

In September, former president Trump issued an executive order requiring federal agencies to “cease and desist from using taxpayer dollars to fund” critical race theory training programs which he called “divisive, un-American propaganda training sessions.”

DeSantis suggested a civics education should turn down the heat in the U.S., which is increasingly divided by politics by giving everyone a common foundation of values.

https://www.city-journal.org/what-school-shutdowns-have-wrought

Though Covid-related restrictions are easing across the country, fewer than half of America’s students are back in school full-time, according to Burbio, a website tracking school reopenings. A look at the national map shows that the most populous state, California, is also the most locked down, while the third-most populous, Florida, is almost completely back to normal. In October 2020, Brown University reported that politics and teachers’ union strength best explain how school boards approached reopening. In a September 2020 study, researchers Corey DeAngelis and Christos Makridis found that school districts in places with strong teachers’ unions were much less likely to offer full-time, in-person instruction in the fall.

In the early days of the lockdowns, medical experts were mixed on reopening schools, but a solid consensus now exists in favor of doing so. Last month, the CDC urged the nation’s elementary and secondary schools to admit students for in-person instruction as soon as possible. Around the same time, the New York Times “asked 175 pediatric disease experts if it was safe enough to open school.” The experts, mostly pediatricians focusing on public health, “largely agreed that it was safe enough for schools to be open to elementary students for full-time and in-person instruction now. Some said that this was true even in communities where Covid-19 infections were widespread, as long as basic safety measures were taken.” Reopening doesn’t lead to increased cases in a community, and closing classrooms “should be a last resort,” according to a March 11 analysis of more than 130 studies by AEI’s John Bailey.

The science is also clear that remote learning has been a disaster for children. A study by FAIR Health, a company that “possesses the nation’s largest collection of private healthcare claims data,” reveals that young people are suffering profoundly. Comparing August 2019 with August 2020 reveals an almost 334 percent increase in intentional self-harm claims in the Northeast for 13- to 18-year-olds. Drug overdoses more than doubled from April 2019 to April 2020 for the same age cohort. From spring 2020 to November 2020, obsessive-compulsive disorder and tic disorders increased for six- to 12-year-olds.