DeSantis Signs Bill Requiring Education on Communist Regimes in Public Schools

By Brittany Bernstein

Tuesday, May 10, 2022

 

Governor Ron DeSantis on Monday signed legislation to create a “Victims of Communism Day” each year on November 7, at which time public school teachers will be required to spend at least 45 minutes teaching students about communist leaders and how people suffered under their regimes.

 

“Today, I established November 7th as Victims of Communism Day to honor those who have suffered under communism and remind people of the destruction communism has caused worldwide, including a death toll exceeding 100 million,” DeSantis wrote in a tweet. “In Florida, we will tell the truth about communism.”

 

The required instruction under House Bill 395 would begin in the 2023-2024 school year and would include teachings on Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong and Fidel Castro, the Miami Herald reported. The required lesson would also teach students about the “poverty, starvation, migration, systemic lethal violence, and suppression of speech” that occurred under those regimes.

 

The governor said the new measure aims to fix the “tremendous ignorance” young Americans have about the history of communism.

 

“That body count of Mao is something that everybody needs to understand because it is a direct result of this communist ideology,” DeSantis said, pointing to the tens of millions of deaths under the communist regime.

 

He added: “I know we don’t need legislation here to do this but I think it’s our responsibility to make sure people know about the atrocities committed by people like Fidel Castro and even more recently people like Nicolas Maduro.”

 

Florida Lieutenant Governor Jeannette Núñez said the new law is in line with efforts to remove critical race theory teachings and other “woke terms” from schools.

 

“Throughout this country, we are seeing communism and socialism being romanticized,” she said at a press conference. “Positive attitudes are at an all time high in this country. But not here in Florida, because freedom, not Marxism, has a home here in the free state of Florida.”

 

Núñez said the measure would “not only teach our children but their children’s children, the importance of freedom, the terrible tyranny of communism, making sure that November 7, they will all understand what has happened throughout this globe throughout history.”

 

DeSantis signed the bill into law at the Freedom Tower in Miami, where 650,000 Cubans were processed after fleeing Cuba in the wake of Fidel Castro’s takeover in 1959. DeSantis announced at the news conference that he plans to approve $25 million in state funding to preserve the tower, according to NBC Miami.

 

“I think this tower is a reminder that freedom is not free, that you have to fight for your rights and that there are a lot of people out there that would love nothing more than to put you under some form of oppression,” DeSantis said.