“Insider” Perspectives on the Struggle Against Curriculum Censorship in Florida: K–20 Multicultural Educators’ Praxis

• In Event: Critical Policy Analyses on White Racial Violence and Censorship

Abstract

This critical policy analysis of anti-‘Critical Race Theory’ curriculum censorship highlights the professional experiences and responses of four K-20 multicultural educators/leaders in Florida vis-a-vis the legislative assault against public education in the state between 2021-2023. Drawing on critical textual analysis, discourse analysis and autoethnography, we foreground our collaborative praxis as long-term university-school partners, to present a) our initial analysis of the Individual Freedom Act, reframed as a call for multicultural education; b) the disjunctions between political rhetoric and the language of the laws that reveal a deliberate intent to confuse and induce fear; and c) our analyses of the multifaceted impacts of the law on daily educational practice within our professional worlds, and varied institutional responses, including our own.

Authors

• Dilys Schoorman, Florida Atlantic University

• Rosanna Gatens, Florida Atlantic University

• Carlisa Russell, Broward County Public Schools

• Brian Knowles, School District of Palm Beach County