DeSantis Denounces Harris’ Florida Curriculum Misrepresentation

Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis denounced Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday for her misleading narrative regarding Florida’s curriculum on the history of slavery. The recent interchange between these political leaders exposes a considerable divide over the state’s educational standards.

Harris alleged that DeSantis had endorsed new standards promoting the concept that enslaved people had benefited from their bondage. DeSantis vehemently countered this claim. “I thought it was absolutely ridiculous, it’s totally outrageous,” he declared during a media briefing.

The Governor invited the public to examine the Department of Education’s official standards. “You guys can look on the website at the Florida Department of Education, they got a lot of scholars together to do a lot of standards,” he said. According to him, these measures were among the most comprehensive in the United States concerning African-American history.

DeSantis contended that the misrepresentation peddled by Harris was a deliberate ploy to detract from the Democratic party’s agenda, which he implied involved indoctrination and inappropriate content for students. He asserted that Florida stood as a barrier to this agenda, pledging to continue exposing its flaws and falsehoods.

Notably, Charles C.W. Cooke, writing for the National Review, amplified DeSantis’ argument. In response to Harris’s allegations, Cooke branded her statement a “brazen lie.” He stressed that there was no substance to claims that Florida’s curriculum was misleading or whitewashing slavery.

Despite DeSantis’s assertive rebuttal, some detractors ignored the crux of his argument, choosing instead to criticize the racial makeup of those standing behind him during his media briefing. This reaction failed to address the matter and deflected attention from the core issue.

Currently campaigning for the presidency, the governor has refocused his campaign as he trails far behind President Donald Trump in the polls. His recent stand against Harris’s claims indicates his ongoing commitment to championing Florida’s educational system and the history of slavery as it is, not as some would prefer it to be.

Harris’s inflammatory remarks came during a speech at the Ritz Theater and Museum in downtown Jacksonville. She expressed criticism of the Florida Department of Education’s decision to approve new standards for teaching specific aspects of Black history. These standards, approved Wednesday, have been a source of considerable debate, including the questionable interpretation cited by NBC News.

In a social media statement, DeSantis replied to Harris’s comments with a genuine reproach: “Democrats like Kamala Harris have to lie about Florida’s educational standards to cover for their agenda of indoctrinating students.”

The clash over Florida’s curriculum underscores a deep divide in the country over how the history of slavery should be taught. It’s a situation that demands rigorous, open debate and transparency rather than political posturing and unsubstantiated claims. As DeSantis puts it, “Anyone who reads that will see that it’s very thorough, factual, and for them to try to demagogue it, look, that may have worked in the past, nobody’s buying their nonsense anymore.”