What does the Stop W.O.K.E. Act actually say?

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 2023

The pleasures of paraphrase: Friend, what should American children be taught in our public schools?

Also, what should students never be taught? Just last year, one well-known state passed a widely-discussed new law addressing such basic questions.

That well-known state is Florida. Just last year, Florida's legislature passed the childishly-named "Stop W.O.K.E. Act."

We still know of no way to access a clean, proofread version of this widely paraphrased law. But in this post from Thursday, Kevin Drum listed some of the things that Florida students must never be taught, according to the Florida law.

What must public school teachers teach in the Sunshine State? What must they never teach? Here's the start of the chunk of the law Drum quoted in his post:

Instruction and supporting materials on the topics enumerated in this section must be consistent with the following principles of individual freedom:

No person is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously, solely by virtue of his or her race or sex.

No race is inherently superior to another race.

No person should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment solely or partly on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, disability, or sex.

That language about "principles of individual freedom" strikes us as fairly silly. That said, we'd have to agree with the general thrust of what that passage says:

Should children ever be taught that one "race" "is inherently superior to some other "race?"

Public school kids should never be taught that, the Stop W.O.K.E. Act plainly says. That directive strikes us as perfectly obvious. 

Moving right along, tell us this:

Should kids be taught that a person should ever be "discriminated against" solely or partly on the basis of race or national origin?

Public school kids should never be taught such a thing, the Stop W.O.K.E. Act plainly says. On its face, we'd agree with that directive—though it may all depend on what the meaning of "discriminated against" is.

(Is an Asian American kid being "discriminated against" if some selective college is looking for ways to create a student population with a wider array of ethnicities? We'll guess that opinions will differ on a semantic question like that.)

Also, the Stop W.O.K.E. Act plainly says that students should never be taught that a person is ever "inherently racist [or] sexist...solely by virtue of his or her race or sex."

That seems like a fairly obvious directive. Would you really want some teacher in some public school telling kids that white girls are inherently racist, or that black boys are inherently sexist? Would you really want to let a bunch of public school teachers, however well-intentioned you may take them to be, head down that treacherous road?

Just for the record, it's hard to enforce directives like these for a very large state. 

On occasion, public school teachers will say and do the darnedest things. At such times, it may be hard to establish what has been said—but it's hard to believe that liberals would disagree with the general thrust of the directives we've listed.

In Thursday's post, Kevin continued on from there, quoting more of the text of the Florida law. Eventually, he reached the directive shown below.

Personally, we think this directive makes obvious sense. But what does this directive actually say and mean?

Instruction and supporting materials on the topics enumerated in this section must be consistent with the following principles of individual freedom:

[...]

A person should not be instructed that he or she must feel guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress for actions, in which he or she played no part, committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex.

Personally, we think that directive makes sense. We don't think that some teacher should be telling a bunch of public school kids that they should—indeed, that they "must"—feel guilt for the reprehensible actions of the benighted, homicidal people who have come before them.

There are many such people in human history. For example, should kids be told that they "must feel guilt" because of what Adolph Hitler did? 

That strikes us as a weird idea. Would you really want a public school teacher heading down some such road?

To the extent that it can be quoted, we've quoted some chunks of The Stop W.O.K.E. Act. To the extent that such legislation can ever be enforced, we think that these provisions make sense.

We don't think that kids should be taught that one "race" is superior to some other "race." We don't think that kids should be taught that they should or must feel guilt for what miscreants in the past have done.

That said, the human heart wants what it wants. More specifically, the human heart often wants The Others to be morally and intellectually wrong in every possible way.

In our view, so it went when Adam Serwer recently paraphrased that provision about anguish and guilt. And so it went, to our surprise, when Drum, our favorite blogger, offered his own paraphrase.

It seems to us that Serwer's account of what that provision says and means is just plainly wrong (though it's also very familiar.) That said, his paraphrase serves a basic pleasure principle, in which we blues are encouraged to believe that The Others are always stupid and evil and wrong.

We were surprised to see Drum go there too! In our view, his subsequent paraphrase of that directive is also weirdly inaccurate.

(Paraphrase can be like that! We noted that fact long ago.)

We may have more on this topic next week. There's a lot to be said about what should (and shouldn't) be taught in the nation's public schools. 

An important discussion could emerge from that question. That said, our failing discourse doesn't run on the fuel of careful discussion. 

Over and over and over and over, our discourse now runs on the rocket fuel of pleasing tribal attacks. Quite plainly, nothing is going to change that fact. According to major future historians, Alea iacta est!

For the record: Alea iacta est? 

According to the leading authority, "Caesar was said to have borrowed the phrase from Menander, the famous Greek writer of comedy, whom he appreciated more than the Roman playwright Terence."