More on Monkey See, Monkey Do
Two years ago I wrote a bit about the governor of Florida enlisting students to record and spy on college teachers to ascertain whether instructors were deviating from the permitted DeSantis script on American history and morals. DeSantis (and his GOP ilk) were clearly borrowing policy from CCP, which encourages students to report teachers to CCP discipline inspection organizations for punishment if they mentioned support for … well, anything of which CCP does not approve. Of course the boundaries of such limits are left vague, in accord with CCP practice – no way to tell when a red line is crossed, so self-censorship becomes the norm. See Monkey See, Monkey Do. I warned DeSantis against his choice of Chinese imports, but apparently my entreaty fell on deaf ears.
Now from William Spivey at The Polis comes news of the free expression crisis at East Florida State College - Eastern Florida State College Shuts Down Class Over Civil Rights Discussion. From the Spivey post -
It should come as no surprise that a US government class was canceled on March 9th before it started in Ron DeSantis's Florida because a single student filled out a complaint form saying they were "uncomfortable with the subject." Josh Humphries, a political science instructor, sent home the class of twenty students to "avoid a disruptive situation," according to an EFSC spokesman.
"There's a climate of fear, an atmosphere created by Gov. Ron DeSantis, that has blurred the lines between scared and opportunistic. The victims of this censorship are history and the truth.”
In DeSantis's Florida, teachers don't know what to teach, and administrators don't know what is allowed. The penalty is severe; they could either lose their jobs, be charged with a third-degree felony, or both. Welcome to Florida! Should this man become President, people will look back fondly on Betsy DeVos, Donald Trump's Secretary of Education, until she resigned after he tried to overturn an election. We won't learn from our history because people will be afraid to teach it.
Not only welcome to Florida. Welcome to education under the Xi Jinping Communist Party. Who would have guessed that GOP and CCP would have so much in common?
(Actually, I did. See my series Xi, CCP, DJT, GOP from almost five years ago)
