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FL GOP Governor Ron DeSantis announced Wednesday the Stop WOKE Act, a new law that seeks to combat indoctrination in schools and corporations by giving parents and employees the opportunity to report the teaching or practice of Critical Race Theory (CRT).
The bill—called the Stop the Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees (W.O.K.E.) Act—proposes to include in the Florida Department of Education code a ban on CRT in elementary schools, preventing school districts, colleges, and universities from hiring consultants to teach it.
The Stop Woke Act against progressive indoctrination
The governor referred to CRT as “state-sanctioned racism” and said the bill will serve to strengthen previously passed legislation to combat indoctrination in schools.
DeSantis also said the U.S. is seeing “an attempt to delegitimize our history and institutions,” and identifies “woke ideology” as a form of “cultural Marxism.”
“We won’t allow Florida tax dollars to be spent teaching kids to hate our country or to hate each other,” DeSantis said. “We also have a responsibility to ensure that parents have the means to vindicate their rights when it comes to enforcing state standard.”
The Republican governor stressed the need to protect workers against a “hostile work environment” that results “when large corporations force their employees to endure CRT-inspired ‘training’ and indoctrination.”
For her part, Florida Lieutenant Governor Jeannette Nuñez said she was proud, as the daughter of Cubans who fled Marxist ideology, to support legislation that will “put an end” to the woke indoctrination “that permeates schools” and businesses.
“This important legislation gives students and employees the resources they need to fight discrimination, critical race theory and indoctrination,” Nuñez said.
During the presentation of the project, Governor DeSantis invited author Christopher Rufo of the Manhattan Institute, who has led a crusade against indoctrination in schools and has become a figure of national importance in the fight against the CRT.
“It is one thing to have critical race theory in Universities; you can ignore it. It is one thing to have critical race theory in the federal bureaucracy. But the fact is, in the last year they have accelerated Critical Race Theory in K-12 public schools and they have done something that no government should do, step between parent and child.”
In that regard, Rufo believes DeSantis is proposing a “model” for other states to follow in protecting students and employees. “The whole country is watching the state of Florida,” Rufo said. “It has leadership that is bold and courageous and is taking action.”
