Jenna Barbee, a primary school teacher, is under state investigation for the scenes in which –passing by– two boys fool around innocently in the movie Disney’s ‘Weird World’. He put it in class after a long day of exams for his ten-year-old students to “degrease.” And because she also -she explains- served to support her explanations about her sciences. She might even get fired from her.

“They accuse me of indoctrination for showing this Disney movie in class. I don’t want to get fired!”, she laments. Despite the fact that the film is rated for all audiencesthat the relationship between the characters Ethan and Diatho is only a minor plot line, and that the teacher had signed authorization from parents and guardians from the beginning of the course, a mother decided to denounce her before the School Council.

“I don’t want this minority finds its way into our schools. God has brought me here!”, he snapped during the session. “They are trying to impose their liberal, religious and sexual orientation ideology,” he tried to argue, almost beside himself, to the perplexity of the rest of the attendees.

She did it ’emboldened’ by the call ‘don’t say gay’ law of the very republican -and now very anti-Disney, for not yielding to his conservative dogmas– Governor Ron DeSantis. A text that restricts sexual and gender education to children under 13 years of age.

565 books censored

They have also seized a law against pornography in a very ultra county to now prohibit the popular children’s book ‘Guess what?’ (guess what1988) by the Australian writer Mem Fox, about the life of a somewhat punk. Everything, for an innocuous illustration that shows her taking a bath. It teaches too much, they argue.

It is not the first time that conservatives have taken it against her, due to allusions to witchcraft and for that matter punk. The organization dedicated to ensuring freedom of expression PEN America has counted 565 censored books, some of them by the Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison or the prestigious Margaret Atwood and Emily Dickinson, since the introduction of the DeSantis law.

And in a new and dangerous push against diversity, DeSantis –who since he was elected as governor has launched a crusade against the “progressive mafia” – has ordered withdraw funds for race, equality, and inclusion studies at Florida public universities for “promoting,” he says, “a dangerous activism political and social”.

A law to revise teaching material

The governor signed bill SB 266 on Monday, which aims to end the teaching of courses known as DEI (abbreviation in English for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion), in addition to two others also on education, at the New College of Florida , in Sarasota. At this university, at the beginning of this year, a new conservative-leaning board of directors was formed.

The rule stipulates that state universities review any teaching subject “based on theories that the racism, sexism and systemic privilege are inherent to the institutions of the United States and were created to maintain social, political and economic inequalities”. This, in the face of the full boom of the critical race theories in United States.

Twisting reality DeSantis argues that DEI “stands for discrimination, exclusion, indoctrination, and that has no place in our public institutions.” It bothers critical thinking.