Florida Launches FACT History Course to Rival AP

Is this a long-overdue fix to biased curricula or a political project that whitewashes America's darkest chapters?

Published 4 days ago

story

Above: The Florida State Capitol in Tallahassee on April 28. Image credit: Malcolm Jackson/Bloomberg/Getty Images

The Spin

Republican narrative

Florida's FACT history course is a long-overdue correction to AP curricula that have spent years drowning students in partisan grievance instead of giving them a complete picture of American history. McClay's "Land of Hope" treats America's failures honestly without making those failures the whole story, which is exactly the balance students deserve. Replacing Howard Zinn's one-sided melodrama with something more rigorous and fair is a win for education, and other states should take note.

Reason.com PJ Media

Democratic narrative

Florida's FACT course is a political project masked as curriculum reform, pushing an "anti-woke" narrative that glosses over slavery and imperialism while locking students into a framework only recognized by Florida colleges. The sole recommended textbook frames enslaved people as contributors rather than victims of brutal forced labor, and the whole initiative stems from DeSantis's war on AP African American Studies. Floridian students will pay the price for this partisan, selective version of history when colleges elsewhere won't accept the credit.

Truthout The Nerd Stash