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Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation Monday honoring victims of communism by requiring public schools to observe “Victims of Communism Day.”
“Honoring the people that have fallen victim to communist regimes and teaching our students about those atrocities is the best way to ensure that history does not repeat itself,” DeSantis said.
HB 395 requires all public schools to observe Nov. 7 as “Victims of Communism Day.”
High school students will receive at least 45 minutes of instruction on “topics such as Mao Tse-tung and the Cultural Revolution, Joseph Stalin and the Soviet System, Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution, Vladimir Lenin and the Russian Revolution, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, and Nicolás Maduro and the Chavismo movement, and how victims suffered under these regimes through poverty, starvation, migration, systemic lethal violence, and suppression of speech.”
The bill also demands that the State Board of Education revises the social studies standards to include the new instruction on “Victims of Communism Day.”
“Through HB 395 and the funding announced today, we are guaranteeing that the history of those who fled communist regimes and their experiences are preserved and not forgotten by our students,” the governor added. “While it’s fashionable in some circles to whitewash the history of communism, Florida will stand for truth and remain as a beachhead for freedom.”
The new measure comes after DeSantis signed three bills requiring schools to teach the “evils of communism,” as previously reported.
DeSantis recently backed the Florida Department of Education’s (DOE) decision to reject almost half of the submitted math textbooks for containing banned topics such as Critical Race Theory after vowing to fight against indoctrination in 2021.
The governor also signed HB 1557, Parental Rights in Education, prohibiting sexual orientation and gender identity teaching in kindergarten through the third grade.
