'Unsolicited': Florida Rejects 54 Math Textbooks Over Critical Race Theory

Governor Ron DeSantis said that "math is about getting the right answer," and not "how you feel about the problem."

Ron DeSantis. Image used for representational purposes only. 

(Photo: Twitter/@GovRonDeSantis)

The education department of Florida has refused to accept 54 mathematics textbooks for next year's school curriculum, citing their alleged references to critical race theory.

In a news release issued last week, the department asserted that some of the books had failed to comply with the state's content standards, known as the Benchmarks for Excellent Student Thinking (BEST).

The release was titled "Florida Rejects Publishers' Attempts to Indoctrinate Students."

(Photo: Screenshots from www.fldoe.org)

It said that 21 percent of the books were rejected "because they incorporate prohibited topics or unsolicited strategies, including CRT."

Additionally, 11 percent of books were rejected "because they do not properly align to BEST Standards and incorporate prohibited topics or unsolicited strategies, including CRT."

Florida's Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, welcomed the move and accused some textbook publishers of "indoctrinating" children with "concepts like race essentialism, especially, bizarrely, for elementary school students," as reported by The Guardian.

He also said, during an event, that "math is about getting the right answer," and not "how you feel about the problem."

According to a paper published by Miami University, "Critical Race Theory, or CRT, is a theoretical and interpretive mode that examines the appearance of race and racism across dominant cultural modes of expression. In adopting this approach, CRT scholars attempt to understand how victims of systemic racism are affected by cultural perceptions of race and how they are able to represent themselves to counter prejudice."

You can read The Quint's explainer on Critical Race Theory here.