JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – More fallout over Florida’s New Academic Standards that require educators to teach about the personal benefits African Americans received during slavery.
A Duval County history teacher resigned from his job over this new curriculum.
The education controversy is happening in the midst of one of the worst teacher shortages in Florida’s history. Up until Wednesday, R.L. Gundy was teaching social studies on the Northside at Ribault High School.
He says these new controversial standards are so hostile, and tainted… he’s calling it quits.
“It’s just too much pressure now for a teacher to teach in this environment that they are created,” Pastor Gundy said.
Gundy says he was already struggling to navigate teaching history to sixth and seventh graders while abiding by Florida’s “Stop WOKE” law -- saying the nail in the coffin for his teaching career are these two benchmark clarifications that the African American task force members approved.
One clarification requires teachers to include instruction that slaves developed skills that could be applied for their personal benefit. The other mandates educators to include acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans.
Gundy who says he’s been certified to teach since 1993, says he feels obligated to tell the whole story, and not what he calls a watered-down version of Black history.
″I’m one of those people who was willing to challenge it. But I would have to have a group of lawyers around me to do it. So rather than to give my principal a headache, and to give the school system a headache, it’s about the kids. And at the end, how do we still teach the kids,” Gundy said.
In Gundy’s resignation letter, he writes:
The governor, the education commissioner, task force and those who wrote this new standard of history should be ashamed of themselves. The climate of teaching social studies in the State of Florida is hostile, standards are bias and not inclusive of the truth of the African American descent historical context.
Gundy says educators across the state are expressing the same concerns.
″Now they won’t admit it, but those principals and other teachers, they are concerned and they are worried about their jobs, they are throwing books out, and now they’ve got this history thing, it’s unnecessary,” Gundy said.
Gundy says he and other African American faith leaders are considering opening academies for African American studies outside of the public school system, including education through churches.