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Florida is Getting a Reset on Classic Education With a little Help from This Tiny Christian School

At a conference hosted by Hillsdale College earlier this year in Tampa, Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis stated that classical academies are flourishing in Florida. It is no secret that Ron DeSantis champions education and the removal of indoctrination from the public school system, which goes back to his days as a congressman in the House of Representatives. The changes that have taken place in his state over the past two years are pretty remarkable, and for most of us living in the Sunshine State with school-aged children, what he has done so far is nothing less than commendable and impressive. 

Hillsdale College, based out of Michigan, has a mission to spread its curriculum through a network of publicly funded but privately managed charter schools. In 2021, the college’s president, Larry Arnn, spoke about what it calls the Barney Charter School Initiative and how Florida is fertile ground for its expansion of new charter schools.

“We got into education reform and founding charter schools and the best place to do it is Florida,” Arnn said during a speech at the college.

This is happening. And to my relief, and no doubt, the relief of many who have felt hijacked the last two years, it couldn’t happen fast enough. Not that indoctrination is new. It has been in the works for the better part of four decades at least; enough time to have brainwashed so many and turned many more away from God with a push toward Marxist ideology with the installation of compulsory public-school attendance. Then there was the Common Core Initiative, the brainchild of Barrack Obama, which sealed the deal in eradicating traditional education and replacing it with a unified framework that hasn’t worked. 

To date, Hillsdale’s initiative has assisted in opening more classical education charter schools in Florida than in any other state nationwide. The influence of Hillsdale College’s influence has been seen in Florida’s rejection of math textbooks over what DeSantis called “indoctrinating concepts,” the state’s push to renew the role of civics in Florida public schools, and the rapidly growing network of affiliated Hillsdale public charter schools in the state of Florida.

Hillsdale also influenced Republican legislation. In 2019, GOP lawmakers approved a law allowing Hillsdale and three other groups to help the state of Florida revise its civics standards. Three years later, those same guidelines are part of the initiative led by Governor Ron DeSantis that has concerned several left-leaning educators about the introduction of Christianity and conservative ideologies and why? Because it goes against the tide of long-standing anti-Christian indoctrination and communist ideals that have been fed to generations of children in state-funded education camps. is it any wonder why homeschooling across the country has increased significantly, and in the state of Kentucky, homeschooling is up a whopping 81 percent.

These efforts, and the partnering with Hillsdale College, are part of DeSantis’ Civics Literacy Excellence Initiative, which he announced in the spring of 2021. Improving civics education has been a priority for the governor as long as he has been in the political realm.

Back in February, at the Hillsdale Conference, the Governor, a Yale Alumni himself, made the following statement:

“When I get people who submit resumes, quite frankly if I got one from Yale, I would be negatively disposed to that individual unless they showed some type of significant counter to the prevailing narrative.  If I get someone from Hillsdale, I know they have the foundations necessary to be able to be helpful in pursuing conservative policies.”

Currently, there are seven Hillsdale-affiliated public charter schools in Florida, and that network is expected to grow throughout the state. 

This story syndicated with permission from For the Love of News