On Florida Education’s benchmark standard of slaves gaining skills which resulted in personal benefits.

History asks, “what happened?”

At this beginning, no bias or value judgement is made.

First, there was no slavery.

Then, slavery happened.

After, blacks were freed.

Moral judgement on slavery?

OBVIOUS violation of human rights.

No rebuttal.

History asks, “what happened?”

Factual: slaves performed vocational work.

Slavery ends.

How are free blacks supposed to be self-sufficient?

Work.

The education in slavery was abysmal due to a lack of access. Their manual labor defined their limited education.

The trades enabled this *limited* access to work.

So on the political divide of this topic, I tread slow and ask readers to wait until the end to judge my thought.

Facts alone, did blacks have skills to enable some sort of self-sufficiency, however limited? Yes.

(This sides with Republicans)

HOWEVER

Why is this benchmark added to the curriculum as opposed to disregarding it?

Understanding historical facts. (Republican view)

or

Is a political agenda being enforced through coercive education? Most likely to dethrone the victimhood of slave descendants. (Democrat view)

The optimal guidelines I propose to go about this learning discussion is as follow:

• start this discussion with a clear understanding of context

• reiterate the immorality of slavery

• offer everyone to challenge their preconceived notions of WHAT happened

• Ask, “how would blacks advance in society post-slavery?”

• Although technically true, use another word than “benefit” to give a neutral judgement of facts-based history

• only have this discussion with a class that is able to discuss this with maturity

• possibly relate the benchmark clarification to the establishment of Agriculture & Mechanical universities

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Whilst history - the good, the bad, and the ugly - must concern facts, then offer students to make their own interpretations upon understanding facts, the addition of this standard is questionable given all the limitations being enforced for classroom discussion.

I say this, granted, I have no hope for compulsory education being a legitimate environment for honing critical thinking and reason-based debates.

If people really want to learn history, they’d ditch the textbooks and state curriculums. The replacement would be dense books written by true historians and not corporate money grabbers who write a remedial hodgepodge of paragraphs which only reach surface-level understanding.

To learn history, seek the rare discussions - the awesomeness of heroes who hide in the shadows of victory, the innocence and ideas in the losers, the evil in society’s saints, and the gut-wrenching costs of major decisions.