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Under Ron DeSantis, Florida Teacher Trainings Included Christian Nationalist Propaganda
Under Ron DeSantis, Florida Teacher Trainings Included Christian Nationalist PropagandaThe Florida Department of Education (DoE) produced teacher training materials that promoted Christian nationalist propaganda and “anti-cancel culture” rhetoric last year, per documents made public this week.
As independent journalist Judd Legum first reported in his newsletter Popular Information, a three-day training course for Florida teachers in summer 2023 included a DoE-sponsored presentation about “Influences of the Judeo-Christian Tradition” in the founding of the United States. The presentation to teachers claimed that the U.S. government is “steeped in the Judeo-Christian tradition,” denied that the authors of the Constitution intended to separate church and state, and even asserted that U.S. law is fundamentally rooted in the Ten Commandments of the Old Testament.
The training materials were first obtained via a public records request from the Florida Freedom to Read Project (FFRP), which has previously published government documents shedding light on Gov. Ron DeSantis’ right-wing education agenda. The slides are marked as part of the Civic Literacy Excellence Initiative, a program started by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2021, and appear to be part of the CLEI’s “3-Day Summer Civics Professional Learning” program for teachers.
Although the slides FFRP obtained were used specifically last year, Florida middle school teacher Myndee Washington told Popular Information that she attended such training sessions in both 2022 and 2023. Washington said she was “gobsmacked” when one presenter directly referenced the King James Bible to reinforce a point during a training. According to Washington, presenters stressed the goal of “dispelling the separation of church and state,” and argued that “there was no such thing because the founders were Congregationalists.” (As Legum noted in Popular Information, Congregationalism — a sect of Protestantism that rejected human hierarchies within religious institutions — was popular among early European Puritan colonists, but not overwhelmingly so among members of the Constitutional Convention.)
As independent journalist Judd Legum first reported in his newsletter Popular Information, a three-day training course for Florida teachers in summer 2023 included a DoE-sponsored presentation about “Influences of the Judeo-Christian Tradition” in the founding of the United States. The presentation to teachers claimed that the U.S. government is “steeped in the Judeo-Christian tradition,” denied that the authors of the Constitution intended to separate church and state, and even asserted that U.S. law is fundamentally rooted in the Ten Commandments of the Old Testament.
The training materials were first obtained via a public records request from the Florida Freedom to Read Project (FFRP), which has previously published government documents shedding light on Gov. Ron DeSantis’ right-wing education agenda. The slides are marked as part of the Civic Literacy Excellence Initiative, a program started by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2021, and appear to be part of the CLEI’s “3-Day Summer Civics Professional Learning” program for teachers.
Although the slides FFRP obtained were used specifically last year, Florida middle school teacher Myndee Washington told Popular Information that she attended such training sessions in both 2022 and 2023. Washington said she was “gobsmacked” when one presenter directly referenced the King James Bible to reinforce a point during a training. According to Washington, presenters stressed the goal of “dispelling the separation of church and state,” and argued that “there was no such thing because the founders were Congregationalists.” (As Legum noted in Popular Information, Congregationalism — a sect of Protestantism that rejected human hierarchies within religious institutions — was popular among early European Puritan colonists, but not overwhelmingly so among members of the Constitutional Convention.)