Florida Dept. Of Education Bans 54 Math Textbooks, Misunderstanding Mathematical Definition of “Radical”

This week, the Florida Department of Education removed fifty-four mathematics textbooks from course curricula, citing the inclusion of topics prohibited in K-12 schools by the state, including Critical Race Theory, after the Committee for Unbiased and Neutral Textbooks held their annual textbook review session. Critical Race Theory, which Florida legislators appear to misunderstand, was originally developed to frame and examine how racial hierarchy is embedded in American society and the law–not math. Upon hearing this announcement, we investigated how Critical Race Theory could have possibly appeared in K-12 math textbooks, only to discover that the Florida Dept. of Education clearly confused the mathematical definition of the term “radical” with the political descriptor with which they are more familiar.

According to an anonymous source, the members of the committee sat in silence for “quite a while” before the committee chair, Ted Nelson (R), began the session. The source said, “He had his assistant wheel out a large dry erase board and told us to think of as many leftist words as possible. At first, no one could think of any. But then, someone shouted ‘GAY,’ and it really got the ball rolling.” The group continued to come up with other “leftist jargon,” including “trans rights,” “healthcare,” and “defund the police.” 

Once the committee members felt satisfied with the list, they began to search for those buzzwords in the online textbooks with the widely-used method, “Control F.” To the committee’s surprise, there were no results for any of the leftist terms in K-12 math textbooks–that is, until they reached the word “radical.” 

“It was really astonishing,” remarked committee member Kathy Tucker (R), “there was a horrifying amount of yellow highlights in the search results. They just lit up like a Christmas tree! Things like ‘multiply by the radical’ and ‘divide by the radical.’ To think, our children are getting indoctrinated by these evil, evil… radicals. In math textbooks, no less! No subject is safe in Leftist America. What has education in this country come to?”

“It literally just means the square root,” sighed  Georgia Cohen, a pre-algebra teacher for Miami-Dade County Public Schools, “for like, you know, numbers,” she finished, confirming a widely known mathematical fact.

 A widely known mathematical fact to most, but not all–certainly not the Florida Dept. of Education, and not even Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) himself, who, according to CNN, actually said on Monday, “We don’t want things like math to have, you know, some of these other concepts introduced. It’s not been proven to be effective, and quite frankly, it takes our eye off the ball,” he said, not defining what “the ball” is, and still clearly missing the point.

At press time, the Florida Dept. of Education announced that they have rejected an additional 142 grammar textbooks for attempting to “force children to learn Queer Theory” with the use of the term “pronouns.”

– VQ ’25 & HP ’22