Proposals to extend instruction about the dangers of communism to kindergarteners are moving forward in the Florida Legislature, but lawmakers have dropped some inflammatory language about topics they want students to learn about.
Both the House and Senate bills, HB 1349 and SB 1264, would establish a task force to create curricula for K-12 public schools on the history of communism, to be taught starting in the 2026-27 school year.
The proposals have fostered tense debate between Republicans and Democrats in committee meetings. North Florida Republican Rep. Chuck Brannan, one of the House sponsors, deleted from his bill the term “cultural Marxism,” which alt-right groups have used to describe a conspiracy theory describing a group of Jewish scholars in Germany who hoped to weaken Western society.
The task force, which Gov. Ron DeSantis would appoint, would have until July 1, 2025, to recommend the communism instruction standards and for the creation of a Florida Museum of Communist History.
The House bill only has one more committee hearing before it heads for a floor vote, but the Senate proposal has two more — one of those will be Tuesday in the Education Appropriations Committee.
While the Senate bill never mentioned cultural Marxism, its sponsor, Republican Jay Collins of Hillsborough County, originally included a reference to the Third Reich of Nazi Germany. The bill cited Nazi Germany as one of the foreign communist movements of the 20th century that students would have to learn about, along with the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China.
The Nazi Party’s official name, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, has been conflated with socialism, but communists, social democrats, and unionists were persecuted under Nazi rule.
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