Already the most ridiculed man in public education, Ryan Walters isn’t yet done making a spectacle of his far-right agenda.
The Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction now wants to rewrite U.S. history lessons to accommodate Donald Trump’s lie that he won the 2020 presidential election.
Walters slipped in this language to proposed state social studies academic standards, asking students to: “Identify discrepancies in 2020 elections results by looking at graphs and other information, including the sudden halting of ballot-counting in select cities in key battleground states, the security risks of mail-in balloting, sudden batch dumps, an unforeseen record number of voters, and the unprecedented contradiction of ‘bellwether county’ trends.”
In the video he wants shown to all students, Ryan Walters bows in prayer for Donald Trump. (Screencap)
These are all talking points straight from Trump and his allies, who continue to falsely claim there was massive fraud in the 2020 election that caused Joe Biden to be elected president rather than Trump. Every one of these allegations has been proved false — many rejected in courts of law.
The Oklahoman reports: “The proposed standards were already controversial because of the dozens of mentions of the Bible and Christianity within them, as well as the membership of the executive review committee that oversaw the process. That committee included the co-founder of the conservative nonprofit PragerU, a representative from the conservative American Enterprise Institute and the president of another conservative group, the Heritage Foundation, along with multiple other conservative voices. Only three of the people on the executive committee have ever lived in Oklahoma.”
Education Week reported: “The proposed standards — drafted under Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters, a vocal Trump supporter — set up the presence of election fraud as an unsettled question that merits debate from both sides.”
In a statement to the education publication, Walters called Trump’s lies “legitimate concerns.”
“We want students to think for themselves, not be spoon-fed left-wing propaganda.”
“We want students to think for themselves, not be spoon-fed left-wing propaganda,” he said. “Students deserve to examine every aspect of our elections, including the legitimate concerns raised by millions of Americans in 2020. This standard empowers students to investigate and understand the electoral process. … We believe students should learn to think critically, not be told what to think.”
Despite concerns raised by Board of Education members and the public, Walters pushed the standards through the board where they passed on a 5-1 vote. The standards now go to the speaker of the Oklahoma House, Kyle Hilbert, R-Bristow, and the state Senate president pro tempore, Lonnie Paxton, R-Tuttle.
A Walters spokesperson, Grace Kim, told the Oklahoman: “The left has hijacked our education system. We have teachers outright teaching our kids to hate our country and our leaders. Not in Oklahoma. In teaching our standards, we believe in giving the next generation the ability to think for themselves rather than accepting radical positions on the election outcome as it is reported by the media.”
House Minority Leader Cindy Munson, D-Oklahoma City, is among those objecting to the last-minute addition to the social studies standards.
“It’s appalling that they keep talking about this when there’s been proof and facts over and over again that there were no discrepancies,” she told Oklahoma Voice. “Joe Biden was the president of the United States, and in terms of the (standards) being in our hands, we will have to apply pressure to House leadership.”
Walters has generated controversy for his blatant support of Christian nationalism, including demanding Christian Bibles be placed in all public school classrooms and all teachers be required to teach from those Bibles.
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