The Florida Department of Education announced Friday that it has banned 42 mathematics textbooks for containing what it claims is material that would “indoctrinate students.”

Florida Commissioner of Education Richard Corcoran said in a press release that his office had rejected the texts under the state’s Benchmarks for Excellent Student Thinking (B.E.S.T.) standards:

“The approved list followed a thorough review of submissions at the Department, which found 41 percent of the submitted textbooks were impermissible with either Florida’s new standards or contained prohibited topics – the most in Florida’s history. Reasons for rejecting textbooks included references to Critical Race Theory (CRT), inclusions of Common Core, and the unsolicited addition of Social Emotional Learning (SEL) in mathematics.”

But how exactly could a textbook for mathematics contain any of the cited “impermissible” topics? How would race even enter into the discussion of how to add, subtract, and divide? The department neglected to explain its reasoning, but did boast that most of the texts it disallowed were for grades K-5:

“The highest number of books rejected were for grade levels K-5, where an alarming 71 percent were not appropriately aligned with Florida standards or included prohibited topics and unsolicited strategies. Despite rejecting 41 percent of materials submitted, every core mathematics course and grade is covered with at least one textbook.”

Corcoran has been trying to stir up outrage over Critical Race Theory (CRT) for months now, remarking “our classrooms, students and even teachers are under constant threat by Critical Race Theory advocates.”

As you’d expect, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) lavished praise on Corcoran for banning the offending textbooks:

“I’m grateful that Commissioner Corcoran and his team at the Department have conducted such a thorough vetting of these textbooks to ensure they comply with the law.”

Where does all of this blatant government censorship end? Will it soon be permissible to ban any textbook that mentions Democrats such as Franklin D. Roosevelt or why the New Deal was necessary to save the American economy during the depths of the Great Depression?

Instead of disallowing more information for students, we would do well to heed this warning from author Stephen Chbosky:

“Banning books gives us silence when we need speech. It closes our ears when we need to listen. It makes us blind when we need sight.”

Featured Image: Screenshot