NEWFANE — The Florida Board of Education has set a new standard of how history will be taught in Florida schools. This comes after a long assault on the parts of history that tell the truth about the United States' dark past of slavery.
The board's new account is that African-Americans "learned skills for their own personal benefit." This implies that slavery was not that bad after all, and it may have even been good for those who were enslaved.
It is hard to believe that those who are in charge of "education" could be so... what can we say? Blind? Corrupt, racist, dumb, and, of course, uneducated?
Every country has its dark side and, therefore, its dark side of history. Something that was said in Florida was telling the truth would make white students feel bad. (Of course, it wasn't put that way, but that was the gist of the idea.) It should make white students feel bad, as it should anyone who looks at what happened in the South in the era of slavery.
Denying history because it might make one feel bad is folly and fraudulence. What happened, happened. We have only one of two ways to deal with this: acknowledge it or ignore it. What would we be ignoring? That humanity is capable of great wrongs and even evil.
When you're in high school, you need to know about what happened, even if it makes your ancestor look wicked, immoral, depraved, cruel, ruthless, and shameless. If they were, they were. The lesson is that humanity has a choice as to how it acts.
I can't imagine what the board of education in Florida is trying to protect. Could it be that some of the racism that existed in the past are still with us? Could it be that they don't want white people to look as bad as they were? Could it be that they themselves are unwilling to look history in the eyes and see it all - the good, the bad, and the ugly?
This Voices Letters from readers was submitted to The Commons.