A private school in Florida announced that its educators will not be teaching students what to think when it comes to Critical Race Theory, Gender Fluidity and the "mainstream narrative" about the coronavirus.
Centner Academy in Miami, Florida released a statement saying it would teach students "how to think" instead of "what to think."
"As our world continues to shift rapidly, we have now found ourselves in a time of more controlled messaging from the media and unprecedented censorship in the United States," the statement reads. "The repeated messaging from the media shapes cultural norms and the way we view social and cultural issues. Rather than jump on board with the mass media’s storyline, we challenge our students to question, research, analyze and consider issues from multiple perspectives before coming to their own conclusions."
"For this reason, as a school, we do not subscribe to or promote Critical Race Theory, Gender Fluidity, or the mainstream narrative surrounding Covid, all hot topics that many schools are now choosing to teach as factual rather than as the theories they are," the statement continues.
This comes as 32 states across the country, including Florida, have made legislative efforts to restrict the teaching of Critical Race Theory in public schools. Thirteen states have already banned the controversial doctrine from their public schools.
The school's pledge to not follow the "mainstream narrative" about COVID follows controversial vaccine policies in 2021, most recently in October when it sent a letter to parents asking them to either keep their children home for at least 30 days if their children got vaccinated or delay getting them vaccinated until summer because "there will be time for the potential transmission or shedding onto others to decrease."
It later reversed course after the Florida Department of Education threatened to pull state funding.
And in April, the school told its employees that they would not be allowed to return to school if they get vaccinated "until clinical trials are complete."
"We cannot allow recently vaccinated people to be near our students until more information is known," CEO and co-founder Leila Centner wrote in a letter to faculty and staff at the time.
But Centner Academy, costing roughly $30,000 in tuition, says it believes in "health freedom" and allows parents to seek medical and religious exemptions to opt-out of the school vaccination program.