Pandora attempting to close the box opened out of curiosity. From an illustration by Frederick Stuart Church.
"The Jesus-rode-dinosaurs folks are at it again; tweaking education in an ongoing crusade to bury our children's heads in the sand," observed Pat Beall in her October 9, 2026, column for the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel. "This time, it's ... Florida's Department of Education, opening its Pandora's box of educational horrors and pulling out a proposal for what students should be taught about science."
Echoing the concerns of both experts on science education and ordinary Floridians, as NCSE previously reported, Beall was particularly incensed about the treatment of climate change and evolution in the proposed new standards. "Florida students' climate studies are slowly and steadily vanishing in reverse sync with the Atlantic Ocean, which is slowly and steadily showing up on their parents' South Florida doorstep. As for evolution, the standards all but erase the Great Leap from simian to the upright and opposable thumb brigade."
"We should have seen it coming," Beall noted, citing the 2024 episode in which the Florida Department of Education demanded the removal of references to climate change — including what she ironically called the "wild and crazy" statement "Reliance on fossil fuels is widespread among consumers and businesses" — from textbooks under consideration for statewide adoption, as NCSE previously reported.
