I'm Jonathan K. Parton. Welcome to K-Part. Florida is at the eye of the storm in the

ongoing discussions about how black history should be taught in public schools. Lessons

deemed too woke are under fire while critics are calling the new teaching standards a step

backward. The latest example, the new curriculum standard that calls for discussing the benefits

of slavery. In this conversation, first recorded for Washington Post Live on August 2, University

of Florida, history professor Paul Ortiz talks about how we got to this point and explains why

efforts to shield students, particularly white students from history, is ridiculous.

If you study something like slavery or the Holocaust or the genocide of Native Americans,

you should feel bad. I feel bad. There should be a reckoning. There should be a realization that

this was a grotesque injustice talking about slavery, talking about the Holocaust.

And will students sometimes feel bad? Yes, because they should.

The new guidelines in Florida to teach black history are 216 pages of academic standards created

by a group of 13, quote unquote, education stakeholders. What prompted all this?

Jonathan, these new standards are designed to align with Florida's

Stop-Oak Act, HB7. The irony here, of course, is that as many of your viewers undoubtedly know,

we have been able to get a federal court injunction against the Stop-Oak Act, HB7.

And so, Governor DeSantis, who has consistently targeted African-American history,

ironically, there's an injunction against the very law that he's trying to get African-American

history standard. And please note, again, it's African-American history that he's picking on.

And so, that's kind of the backdrop behind the creation of these history standards.

You know, I'm going to skip way ahead because I was going to get to the Stop-Oak Act and the

injunction behind it so far. Its application in colleges has been halted by the 11th Circuit

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