evidence: Florida's new social studies educational standards have drawn national scrutiny from academics and politicians alike, particularly the state's revised language around how skills enslaved people learned could be used for their "benefit." [...] While the concept of discussing enslaved people's skill sets in a classroom setting is broadly accepted, scholars who contributed to the AP African American Studies curriculum tell TIME that the use of the phrase "personal benefit" is the main problem with the Florida standards. Greg Carr, a historian at Howard University who contributed to the AP African American Studies framework, says, "To say that there's a benefit is absurd. There's no benefit to enslavement." What the Florida standards do not underline, he says, is that enslaved people "are trying to use their talents, their skills, their memory, their culture to resist, in ways big and small." Daina Ramey Berry, a historian at University of California, Santa Barbara, who also contributed to the AP African American Studies framework, says teachers must talk about "freedom in Africa" to emphasize that "before being captured and sold into slavery, African people came from highly civilized societies with a variety of skills."