DeSantis Passes out $3,000 Bonuses to Florida Teachers for Attending Civics ‘Boot Camp’

Governor calls on students to make the United States 'a republic that we can keep'

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) presents $3,000 bonus checks to teachers who had won the Civics Seal of Excellence. Courtesy of Gov. Ron DeSantis's office

Florida’s new civics “boot camp” for teachers has graduated 4,500 from the program and has a long waiting list of others hoping to take the course, Gov. Ron DeSantis said at a press conference on March 23.

He’s prepared, he said, to ask state lawmakers to come up with more money to award $3,000 bonuses to other educators who take it.

The goal is to get “American civics back front-and-center in our school system,” DeSantis told his audience at Ridgeview High School in Orange Park near the state’s northeast corner.

Depending on their path in life, students won’t necessarily find use for every course they take in high school, the Republican governor said.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis answers questions from the media in the Florida Cabinet following his "State of the State" address at the Florida State Capitol in Tallahassee on March 7, 2023. Cheney Orr/AFP via Getty Images

But regardless of what they do, “everybody is going to be called upon to exercise the duties of being an American citizen,” said DeSantis, a likely presidential candidate in 2024.

“And that is something we take seriously here in Florida.”

Students who pass the high school civics literacy exam will fulfill the civics requirement at state colleges and universities.

The Cost of Freedom

At the press conference, state Education Commissioner Manny Diaz told of how his parents had fled Communist Cuba in the 1960s.

“I was fortunate to be born in this country,” said Diaz, a former high school history teacher.

“But I never forget that because I understand what my family went through, and what the cost of freedom is, and that fact that many times, we take it for granted.”

“Sometimes the people that come here from all countries realize that, more than folks who have been here for multiple generations.”

DeSantis agreed.

As part of the civics initiative, Florida has set aside Nov. 7 each year to teach students about victims of communism.

People who’ve fled that political system “realize that freedom is not something you can take for granted,” DeSantis said.

State Education Commissioner Manny Diaz, Jr., who previously served in the Florida Legislature as a state senator, is shown speaking in the Florida Senate chambers in Tallahassee, Fla., on April 23, 2019. Phil Sears/Photo via AP

Immigrants from countries taken over by communists “lost their freedom and they lost everything,” DeSantis said.

“We can sit there, pat ourselves on the back, and act like [our ideas] are unimpeachable. But they are contested in this world. You look at China, and how they operate much differently than how the United States was envisioned to operate.”

A Nation’s Beginnings

Florida’s civics curriculum delves deep into the roots of democracy, pulling from principles of ancient Rome and Greece, Judeo-Christian teachings, and natural law, DeSantis said.

The Founding Fathers admired British constitutionalism, with many of them fighting initially for their rights as Englishmen. Then, they took it a step further.

The British Constitution is unwritten, DeSantis said. But the Framers decided to follow the example of colonial churches, where congregations wrote covenants binding them to their beliefs. So they laid out the American Constitution in ink on parchment.

A 1940 painting by Howard Chandler Christy is entitled “Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States,” and is displayed at the U.S. Capitol. Public Domain

The state’s curriculum examines the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Articles of Confederation, and slavery, including the bitter divisions it created, DeSantis said.

It examines the three branches of government, all articles of the Constitution, and the amendments, including those of Reconstruction.

Teachers, he said, tell him they like how the material is presented and find it very understandable.

Prioritizing Lessons on America

DeSantis prioritized civics education during his first term, establishing the Florida Civics and Debate Initiative to encourage students to learn and compete with other students.

He aims to have the program in each county and school district by the end of his second term, a spokesman told The Epoch Times. Florida hosted the nation’s first national Civics and Debate Championship in 2021.

Debate teaches students to look at ideas critically, DeSantis said. And it’s important for them to be able to defend views contrary to their own beliefs, a key skill in competitive debate, he said.

The first 20,000 teachers who complete the state’s new Civics Seal of Excellence program for educators will earn bonuses of $3,000. About 10,000 signed up in the first week after it was launched last fall.

Teachers from three unions pass out free children's books during "The Great Florida Read In" near the state Capitol, in Tallahassee, Fla. on March 14, 2023. Nanette Holt/The Epoch Times

DeSantis and Diaz handed out ceremonial checks for the $3,000 to seven local teachers who had already completed the course.

One of them, Brittany Bishop, urged all teachers to take the course.

“It doesn’t matter what subjects you teach,” Bishop said. “Because every day you step up and you have the right, you have the weight, to make an impact on a child’s life.”

Another, Michael Taft, a civics teacher at Green Cove Springs Junior High School, compared the work of the Founding Fathers—also known as the Framers—to a picture frame.

“They gave us a frame, like a picture. And they put the frame together for us. They asked us, their posterity, to fill in the rest of the pieces from the outside in to make this great thing called America,” Taft said.

“We are at a civics crisis, basically, in this country, because of the divisions we have,” Taft said. “I see it, personally, as based upon party. George Washington warned of this in his farewell address, that political parties would lead to division in this country.”

A Citizen’s Responsibility

American citizens have an ongoing responsibility to help uphold the nation’s democracy, DeSantis said. He warmed to the subject by describing what the civics curriculum teaches and why it’s essential.

When the Founding Fathers signed the Constitution, after long and bitter debate and many compromises, “they ended up with a document that everyone was either happy with, or at least could live with,” DeSantis said.

He referred to an oft-repeated story of how Benjamin Franklin, walking on the street in Philadelphia, was stopped by a woman.

“Benjamin Franklin,” circa 1785, by Joseph-Siffred Duplessis (1725–1802). (Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery)

As the story goes, DeSantis recalled, the woman asked, “‘Dr. Franklin, what have you given us? A republic or a monarchy?’ And he said, ‘A republic, ma’am, if you can keep it.’

“They never thought that this was something that could run on autopilot,” DeSantis said.

The Framers understood, from having studied the history of the world and every republic, “that all of these experiments had failed up to the point of America,” DeSantis said. “And so they were really going against the tide of history.

“They were really trying to challenge the idea that people were forever destined to live under various forms of despotism.”

“But they knew it wouldn’t be easy. They knew it required citizenry that really appreciated the values of the country, and were willing to work hard to uphold them.”

Now, DeSantis said, “we’re calling upon all of our students to be able to engage in this, and to be able to leave our school system with a foundation so that, yes, a republic that we can keep.”