Florida mandates anti-communism course for all middle and high school students starting 2026

Starting in the fall of 2026, every middle and high school student in Florida will be required to complete a social studies course on the history of communism — a sweeping curricular mandate that has drawn both institutional backing from conservative organizations and sharp rebuke from educators and academic historians.

The curriculum has been endorsed by the Heritage Foundation, the Trump-aligned conservative think tank; the National Association of Scholars (NAS), a right-leaning nonprofit; and the Civics Alliance, an NAS affiliate.

The move builds on a 2022 Florida law that established a mandatory annual Victims of Communism Day, observed each November 7 — the date marking the onset of the October Revolution in Russia in 1917. Under that law, schools are required to devote a minimum of 45 minutes each year to instruction on what the legislation describes as “the horrors of communism” and “the destructive nature of Marxism-Leninism.” The program is also expected to instill “respect for the founding principles of the American republic,” though those principles are left undefined in the statute.

The new curriculum formally extends that single-day observance into a full course requirement. It also deepens Florida’s alignment with the Phoenix Declaration: An American Vision for Education — a document developed by the Heritage Foundation and published in February 2025.

Florida Education Commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas, who announced the Declaration’s formal state adoption at a press conference, described it as a reflection of the state’s “connection with the Heritage Foundation.” The Declaration explicitly restricts instruction on sexual orientation, gender identity, racial inequity, and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) — subjects the state has long characterized as pedagogically problematic.

In their place, the Declaration commits to curricula that purportedly cultivate “love of country” and teach children “to seek the good, the true, and the beautiful.” Florida remains the only state to have signed the Declaration. Kamoutsas and state education officials argue that the new History of Communism Standards will reinforce the Declaration’s principles and strengthen students’ “support for capitalism and free enterprise.”

The curriculum’s rationale, as articulated in official state materials, is unambiguous in its political framing:

“Young Americans’ open affection for socialism and communism is a result of never having been educated about the characteristic features of communism in practice: poverty, oppression, and mass murder. If students in New York had been taught the litany of horrific atrocities committed in the name of communism by Lenin and Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, it would be hard to believe that Zohran Mamdani, for example, would receive such enthusiastic support.”

The state Department of Education’s press release further praised the standards, stating that “Florida is leading the nation in equipping students with an accurate and thorough understanding of how communist ideologies suppressed individual freedoms, abused power, and caused widespread suffering.”

The curriculum enumerates a broad range of topics to be covered: how communist espionage undermined US national security and continues to threaten the United States and its allies; how communists infiltrated the civil rights movement; and the mechanics of communist indoctrination.

The standards cast Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee as “champions of anti-communism.” They condemn collective ownership models, and extol the virtues of private property and individual wealth accumulation. Cuba receives particularly pointed treatment, labeled — unfavorably — as a prominent exporter of “revolutionary internationalism.”

Andrew Spar, president of the Florida Education Association, has been among the most vocal critics of the new curriculum. In a statement to Truthout, he said:

“Florida’s code of ethics requires educators to teach state standards. That’s the difficulty. Teachers already feel handcuffed. If they want to use their own resources or add supplemental reading or film, those materials first have to be approved by the district. We know that students in public schools need and deserve more than just math and reading instruction. They need honest history instruction. A democratic society requires students to learn how to think, not what to think. Debate and deliberation encourage creativity and the development of problem-solving skills. But that’s not what’s being encouraged.”

Spar also reported that teachers are increasingly anxious about the boundaries of permissible instruction. “The state should let teachers teach,” he said. “It’s concerning that the right wing says it wants to take politics out of education, but this mandate does the exact opposite.”

Spar is not alone in his objections. Despite opposition from the union and from the broader civic community, teachers and administrators expect the curriculum to be implemented at the start of the 2026–2027 academic year. Opponents nonetheless express hope that its negative reception will discourage other states from adopting the model.

Yale historian Timothy Snyder, writing on Substack, criticized the curriculum for reducing the United States to a crude superlative — “the best country in the world” — and for asserting that the US “should be defined as free and democratic regardless of what Americans or legislatures actually do.” Snyder concluded that the curriculum prevents any meaningful examination of the nation’s own history and forecloses substantive thinking about how best to protect and expand equality, justice, and freedom.

Historian Ellen Schrecker, a leading authority on right-wing political repression and McCarthyism, told Truthout that the curriculum contains numerous factual distortions requiring direct correction:

“They are throwing out random facts about alleged communist attacks on American values. What students will be taught is a vision of a nonexistent communist threat. The portrayal of an out-of-control left — socialist and communist — constantly trying to undermine American security is simply false. We also need to look at what’s missing from the curriculum. For example, in the section on McCarthy, there is no mention that people lost their jobs and genuinely suffered as a result of his attacks.”

Like Snyder, Schrecker finds the curriculum’s depiction of the United States as a beacon to the world deeply problematic. “The curriculum presents the US as largely perfect, with its great, white, male, Christian leaders, while warning that the country can be threatened by external socialist or communist forces,” she said. “There is no mention of people within the US who were oppressed or had limited opportunities. There is also a vague ‘us versus them’ framing that focuses on individual rather than collective responses.”

John White, a professor of English and Adolescent Literacy at the University of North Florida, also expressed concern about the factual claims embedded in the History of Communism Standards:

“The right says teachers shouldn’t indoctrinate students, yet they’ve produced a curriculum that indoctrinates students into a particular point of view. The curriculum conflates communism and socialism as if they were a single ideology. It ignores the fact that Joseph McCarthy is widely recognized as a discredited demagogue. Worse still, the term ‘communism’ appears to function as a catch-all slogan for any idea the right finds objectionable.”

White noted that many of his students pursue social studies education because of a genuine love of history and politics. “They don’t want to view the world through a binary lens of good and evil, or to place racism, sexism, and homophobia in the ‘bad’ category while placing blind patriotism in the ‘good’ category,” he said. “Students don’t need everything handed to them pre-packaged. This curriculum is the antithesis of good teaching because it undermines critical thinking.”

None of these objections appear to have given the Florida Department of Education or Governor Ron DeSantis’s administration any pause. State officials view the History of Communism Standards as the natural successor to Americanism vs. Communism, a mandatory course taught to Florida middle and high school students between 1962 and 1983.

That earlier requirement was enacted in the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in April 1961. Its stated purpose was to teach Florida’s children “the dangers of communism, the ways to fight communism, the evils of communism, the fallacies of communism, and the false doctrines of communism.”

Linda Camarasana, a retired professor of English at the State University of New York at Old Westbury, took that course in 1976 at a high school in North Miami Beach.

“We knew the purpose was to teach us the evils of communism and emphasize American superiority,” she told Truthout. “But at the time, North Miami had a very liberal population, and so did our teachers. We learned about the conditions that led to the Russian Revolution and caused the people to rise up.”

Camarasana said that despite the ideological intent of the course, she and her classmates came away with a balanced perspective — one that encouraged independent inquiry and research.

Both DeSantis and Kamoutsas are determined to ensure that the current History of Communism Standards afford neither students nor teachers any comparable flexibility to examine systems of government on their own terms.

As Kamoutsas declared at the 2025 press conference, halting “the resurgence of communist ideologies in the United States and around the world” is Florida’s stated educational priority. He and the state Department of Education have expressed confidence that the curriculum will soon be adopted by other states as well.