The U.S. Department of Interior’s (DOI) National Park Service provides a lesson on slavery on its website geared towards seventh through ninth graders that contains similar language to the Florida African American History standards that Vice President Kamala Harris criticized.
Harris previously criticized African American History standards that the Florida Department of Education (DOE) approved in July, claiming that the curriculum teaches that slaves were beneficiaries of slavery, though no curriculum exists or has ever been proposed. The DOI’s National Park Service Museum Management Program provides a curriculum on slavery drafted by a high school teacher that discusses the “potential marketability” of skills acquired by slaves, according to the department’s website.
“Students analyze objects to determine what skills a house slave needed to complete assigned tasks,” the lesson, titled “A House Slave: Acquiring Skills,” says, according to the DOI’s Park Service’s website. “Students explore the potential marketability of these skills. This lesson also introduces students into 19th century foodways.”
The Advanced Placement (AP) African American Studies course has similarities to the new K-12 standards adopted by Florida, teaching that slaves “learned specialized trades and worked as painters, carpenters, tailors, musicians, and healers” and “used these skills to provide for themselves and others.” Harris praised the AP course in January after the Florida DOE blocked the college-level course because it contained a lesson on “queer theory,” according to the New York Post.
Florida’s approved African American History standards detail the injustices slaves suffered throughout the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. African American heroes throughout American history and their “service and sacrifice” during the “Revolutionary Era” are taught in the standards.
The standards also include several historical accounts of African Americans, slaves and their immediate descendants, the Florida DOE noted in July.
Some folks are now pointing out that the National Parks Service has very similar wording to the Florida history standards. https://t.co/tk15g8XtWh pic.twitter.com/kwBjh72ZjE
— Zaid Jilani (@ZaidJilani) August 1, 2023
DeSantis invited Harris to Florida on Monday to have an “open and honest dialogue” about the curriculum and meet with one of the lead academics in the creation of the standards. The Florida DOE announced in July that it would move to implement the African American History standards in its state classrooms, despite the backlash from the White House.
“Over the past several weeks, the Biden administration has repeatedly disparaged our state and misinformed Americans about our education system,” DeSantis wrote in a letter to Harris. “Our state pushed forward nation-leading standalone African American History standards – one of the only states in the nation to require this level of learning about such an important subject. One would think the White House would applaud such boldness in teaching the unique and important story of African American History.”
The DOI and the White House did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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