Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wants to take feelings out of the equation.
On Monday, the Sunshine State Governor defended the Florida Department of Education’s rejection of math textbooks as part of an effort to terminate social-emotional learning, a teaching philosophy that helps kids manage their feelings and show empathy for others, from the subject curriculum.
“Math is about getting the right answer. We want kids to learn to think so they get the right answer,” DeSantis said at a press conference in Jacksonville.
“It’s not about how you feel about the problem or to introduce some of these other things. There’s a right answer and there’s a wrong answer. And we want our students getting the right answer.”
DeSantis said objective subjects like math should remain uncluttered by “political” content, such as social-emotional learning and critical race theory.
The Florida Department of Education also dismissed suggested textbooks that adhered to the federal Common Core curricular framework that the state has rejected.
DeSantis said in a statement on Monday that the approach made it hard for parents to assist their children with basic math homework and impeded learning.
The governor also stated that the majority of the textbooks his DOE found objectionable targeted students at younger grade levels.
“We’re going to focus the education on the actual strong academic performance of the students,” DeSantis said. “We don’t want things like math to have some of these other concepts introduced. It hasn’t been proven to be effective and quite frankly it takes our eye off the ball.”
In 2021, the department invited publishers to submit math textbooks that can be used in the state’s public school system.
According to the department, twenty-one percent of the rejected textbooks were not accepted because they include forbidden topics or unsolicited strategies, including CRT.
DeSantis previously banned critical race theory as a curricular element in Florida schools, arguing that it promotes racial division and undermines the development of personal agency.
