The National Association of Scholars (NAS) and the Civics Alliance are delighted with, and enthusiastically endorse, Florida’s new K-12 History of Communism Social Studies Standards. These Standards provide an excellent framework to instruct Florida public school students in the nature of the horrors of Communism. Florida students will not be ignorant of what Communism has produced when they graduate.
Far too many American students do graduate without knowing anything about the horrors of Communism. Young Americans avowed fondness for socialism and Communism is the corollary of never having been taught about the poverty, cruelty, and mass murder that are the characteristic accompaniments of Communism in practice. It is difficult to believe that Zohran Mamdani (for example) would have received such enthusiastic support if New York students had been taught about the lamentable catalogue of atrocities committed in the name of Communism by Lenin and Stalin, by Mao and Pol Pot, by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara—and the everyday miseries suffered by those subjects of Communist regimes fortunate enough to survive the prison camps and the execution squads.
Consider a few examples of what American students should know, now firmly ensconced in Florida’s high school History of Communism Standards:
Instruction includes the methods Marx determined were necessary to achieve communism (e.g., violence, revolution and the dismantling of all existing social conditions, abolition of private property, forced labor). (SS.912.HC.1.7)
Instruction includes the Russian Civil War, creation of the Cheka, the Red Terror and Lenin’s Hanging Order of 1918, the murder of Tsar Nicholas and the royal family, the use of poison gas during the Tambov Rebellion, the Kronstadt Rebellion, and the formal establishment of the Soviet Union in1922. (SS.912.HC.4.4)
Instruction includes Popular Front culture, including the Hollywood Ten, the Weavers, and Lillian Hellman. (SS.912.HC.7.4)
These and many other essential parts of our history have been virtually eliminated from public school instruction, not least at the behest of radicalized educators who wish to soften or excise Communism’s blood-stained history. Florida’s Standards make sure that teachers cannot camouflage these horrors and that students will learn the truth about the nature and consequences of Communism.
The Standards reflect well on the entire political and educational establishment of Florida, including the legislators who sponsored and voted for Senate Bill (SB) 1264 (2024), which established these Standards; Governor Ron DeSantis, for signing the bill and ensuring that Florida’s Department of Education followed through; and the Department of Education, whose personnel—especially Timothy MacGregor, Director of the Office of Social Studies and Humanities—did an excellent job of producing the Standards. We also want to praise the History of Communism Workgroup that provided the content for the Standards—although here we must pause to note that NAS’ Director of Research, David Randall, was part of the Workgroup, so our praise is directed at his colleagues, rather than for one of our own staff members.
NAS participation registers some of our own previous work on the subject: the Model History of Communism Standards(2024). We are proud to say that our work informed Florida’s Standards—but the contribution was by the indirect means of inspiring Randall (and perhaps other members of the Workgroup) during the drafting process. A close reader of the two documents will see some relation between the two documents—and also see an enormous amount more that is the independent work of members of the Workgroup, and of the Florida Department of Education. We are glad that our work contributed to Florida’s, and we are glad that we could learn from Florida.
Florida’s work is a model for the country. This already is literally the case: Oklahoma’s new social studies standards for the History of 20th Century Totalitarianism course were informed both by Florida’s Holocaust Education Standards and by the Civics Alliance’s Model History of Education Standards. Other states now should look both to Florida’s Holocaust Education and History of Communism Standards as models. (And also to Florida’s African American History standards.) We also think they should continue to look at our own Model History of Communism Standards. But Florida’s Standards are an excellent competitor to ours, and a state would do well to use the Florida model.
We will make one reservation to our general recommendation of Florida’s new History of Communism Standards. SB 1264 directed that the History of Communism Standards focus on Cuba, and more generally on Communism in Latin America. Florida’s final History of Communism Standards do indeed include generous material on Communism in Cuba and revolutionary Socialism in Venezuela. This emphasis is appropriate for Florida, but other states might abbreviate their coverage of Latin American Communism and still produce a solid History of Communism standard.
Standards creation is only the beginning of education reform. Florida should follow up on its new History of Communism Standards by work to provide curriculum frameworks, model lesson plans, revised textbooks, and, above all, reformed teacher training, so that teachers are equipped to teach these new Standards. Florida has done excellently at this complex of educational reform in the last decade, so we are sure they will do so. We mention this work more for education reformers in other states, so that they will know else needs to be done to ensure that standards reform translates into reform of classroom instruction.
Florida’s History of Communism Standards are excellent. The people of Florida can be proud of what their elected officials and their Department of Education have accomplished. We hope that many other states will follow Florida’s pioneering example.
Photo by Mick Haupt on Unsplash
