Forcing Our Teachers to Toe the Line on Communism

The substance of the meme here is correct; Florida public schools require comprehensive K-12 instruction on the history and dangers of communism, following a series of legislative moves and curriculum standards. The updated “History of Communism” curriculum is rolling out for the 2026–2027 school year, mandating that students learn about the “brutal realities” and (the catastrophic) global impact of communist regimes.

When I was a schoolboy in the 1960s and early 1970s, we came to learn that all efforts to establish a viable communist nation had failed, but our teachers were not shackled as to what they could teach and how they could teach it.  As a result, we came to a variety of helpful viewpoints, and these are what I offered my own kids as they were growing up, e.g.,

• “Men are not angels,” as my sixth-grade social studies teacher explained.  Those who do not need to work in order to survive can simply goof off.
• Yet idleness is averse to most people’s psychological needs to be an active and productive person, and member of society.
• Power corrupts, and absolutely power corrupts absolutely.  Democracy prevents the accumulation of a pathological amount of power on the part of any one leader.  (This was assumed to be true until Donald Trump’s second term.)
• If Lenin (a butcher) hadn’t had Trotsky (a compassionate intellectual) assassinated, the entirety of the USSR would have turned out completely differently.
• If the U.S. hadn’t, through its embargoes, made it impossible for Cuba to offer its people a decent quality of life, their revolution may have succeeded and brought forth a new way of thinking.
• There are examples of smaller scale societies in which the ideals of communism work out very nicely, e.g., the Israeli kibbutz.
• We read and discussed at length a book called “Social Ideals and Ideal Societies” in which these concepts were analyzed fairly and in great depth.

Now, will the typical American schoolchild turn out better if he’s cut off from thinking critically about all this and forced to accept the mantra that “communism = evil?” The typical Florida Republican would say the answer is an obvious yes, but most intelligent people would dispute that.

Producing educated people who can think for themselves is an idea quite opposed to the ongoing control of a population.