Florida State Senator Alan Hayes, according to a report in The Hollywood Reporter, is planning on introducing legislation to mandate that all Florida high schools show Dinesh D’Souza’s new film “America.”
That is, unless parents don’t want their kids to see it.
“I saw the movie and walked out of the theater and said, ‘Wow, our students need to see this.’ And it’s my plan to show it to my colleagues in the legislature, too, before they’re asked to vote on the bill,” Hayes told THR.
The movie’s creator, Dinesh D’Souza, is likely headed to prison for being “foolish and wrong” regarding campaign finance laws. But let’s leave that out of this discussion, as it’s irrelevant — as are his other alleged sins as the president of an evangelical college and his tenure as a Christmas tree salesman.
The movie, I’m told from those who have seen it, is well done. D’Souza even got the producer from Jurassic Park! (He spared no expense!) The film covers many aspects of American history from a conservative bent. It rightly goes after the discredited, kooky leftist historian Howard Zinn, whose work should never see the inside of a public school classroom.
Hooray. Good for D’Souza. But should his work ever see the inside of a classroom? Call me crazy, but we should keep control of curriculums locally controlled and with parental oversight.
But State Senator Alan Hayes, on the other hand, wants to fight Zinn’s influence with fire — by mandating kids see D’Souza’s film in public schools.
Which is precisely what Republicans shouldn’t be doing, as it shows kids a bad side of Republicanism — mandating things and promoting an unserious view of what a curriculum should be and how it should be formed.
Hayes would be better off spending his time working to provide meaningful reforms and keeping bad history out of schools.
