Teacher, mother speak out over new Black history school standards

The Florida Board of Education has approved a controversial set of standards for how Black history should be taught in the state’s public schools, but the standards are not without major critics.

Part of the high school standards dictates instructors teach not just about violence against African Americans but also violence by African Americans.

Part of the middle school standards that would require instruction to include “how slaves developed skills,” which could suggest slavery was beneficial to those enslaved.

WINK met with a teacher and a mom who reviewed the new standards and asked them to explain the changes.

As Lashanda Hutchins made her way through the Lee County school system, she learned African American history, but she said that she always felt like a piece of the puzzle was missing.

“As a kid, I always wondered, you know, what else was there? Because it seems like, oh, you’re African American people pop up in America, like, how did that happen?” Hutchins said. “There’s thousands of years of African history prior to coming into America.”

Thousands of years of African history before slavery. Hutchins is now an elementary school teacher herself at Franklin Park Elementary School.

She said that African history is left out of the curriculum, and now she worries about how kids learn African American history will change.

“I think that they need to be taught the entire truth, the good, the bad and the ugly,” Hutchins said. “Slavery was a horrific, a horrific part of American history, and it needs to be taught that way.”

This week, the Florida Board of Education approved new standards for how African American history will be taught in public schools.

Annie O’Donnell, a Collier County mom and former teacher, showed WINK News two sections she found alarming.

Part of the middle school standards would require instruction to include “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”

“There’s no justification for owning human beings, period, and I don’t understand why the state would need to say anything other than that,” O’Donnell said.

And a section in the high school portion says that the curriculum “Includes acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans, but is not limited to 1906 Atlanta race riot, 1919 Washington, D.C. race riot, 1920 Ocoee Massacre, 1921 Tulsa Massacre and the 1923 Rosewood Massacre.”

O’Donnell calls that victim-blaming.

“It is one of the single largest acts of violence on an election day, and it was to prevent people from exercising the right to vote,” O’Donnell said.

Education commissioner Manny Diaz called the new curriculum robust. He predicted that Florida’s standards will set the norm for other states.

This is Florida’s first effort to specify what African American history should be taught in each grade.