DeSantis signs bills requiring Florida schools to teach about evils of communism
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill on Wednesday requiring Florida schools to teach the horrors and atrocities wrought by communism – directly opposing progressive efforts to instil far-left ideology’s supposed virtues.
The law will require high schools to cover the “evils of communism and totalitarian ideologies” in public schools.
Speaking to the press, the Republican governor said that three bills — HB 5, HB 233, and SB 1108 — will cast a spotlight on the atrocities committed by communist regimes for students, informing them of why so many citizens of socialist and communist-run countries like Cuba, Venezuela and North Korea fled for the United States.
“We have a number of people in Florida, particularly southern Florida, who’ve escaped totalitarian regimes, who escaped communist dictatorships to be able to come to America,” DeSantis said Tuesday. “We want all students to understand. Why would somebody flee across shark-infested waters, say, leaving Cuba, to come to southern Florida? Why would somebody leave a place like Vietnam? Why would people leave these countries and risk their life to be able to come here?”
The legislation also calls for the creation of a “Portraits and Patriotism” library on real American patriots who escaped communist dictatorships prior to becoming citizens of the United States. These figures include Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, famous for his bookThe Gulag Archipelago, a Russian writer and political prisoner who famously chronicled the horrors of political repression and human rights abuses under communist rule before moving to the United States. Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia only after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1990.
FL students will learn about patriots who come to America after fleeing communist regimes. Our students will learn from an integrated civic education curriculum that compares our rights & freedoms to places where they don’t exist like China & North Korea. https://t.co/8CCweFQhwD
— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) June 22, 2021
DeSantis’ conference included comments by Anna Bouza, a Nicaraguan refugee who fled the socialist Sandinistas.
“You have orthodoxies that are promoted, and other viewpoints are shunned or even suppressed,” said DeSantis, per News4Jax. “We don’t want that in Florida, you need to have a true contest of ideas, students should not be shielded from ideas and we want robust First Amendment speech on our college and university campuses.”
WATCH:
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announces he is signing a bill requiring high school students to learn about the "evils of communism and totalitarian ideologies." The bill also creates a library that allows students to learn about "real patriots" who escaped communism and socialism. pic.twitter.com/x9cvBv5jXK
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) June 22, 2021
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