Oklahoma.i start – Oklahoma high school students studying the history of the United States learn about the industrial revolution, women’s suffrage and the expanding role of the United States in international affairs.
As of next school year, they will add conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election.
The new Oklahoma Social Studies standards for public school students of K-12, already infused with references to the Bible and national pride, were reviewed in the direction of the State School Superintendent Ryan Walters. The republican official has spent much of his first term in the position of praise President Donald TrumpFight with teachers unions and local school superintendents, and trying to end what he describes as “wokeness” in public schools.
“The left has been pushing left -wing indoctrination in the classroom,” Walters said. “We are going back to really understand the story … and I’m not apologizing about that.”
The previous standard to study the 2020 elections simply said: “Examine the problems related to the 2020 choice and their result.” The new version is more expansive: “Identify the discrepancies in the results of the 2020 elections when observing graphics and other information, including sudden detention of voting counting in selected cities in the key battlefield states, the safety risks of the email vote, ‘Bellwether’ County Trends. “
The new standard raised the red flags even among Walters Republicans, including governor and legislative leaders. They worried that several last minute changes, including the language on the 2020 elections and a disposition that indicated that the source of the Covid-19 virus was a Chinese laboratory, they were added only hours before the State School Board voted on them.
A group of parents and educators has filed a lawsuit Asking a judge to reject the standards, arguing that they were not reviewed correctly and that “they represent a distorted vision of social studies that intentionally favor an outdated and blatantly biased perspective.”
While many Oklahoma teachers have expressed indignation for change in standards, others say they leave a lot of space for students to instruct students about the results of the 2020 elections without informing them badly.
Aaron Baker, who has taught the United States government in secondary schools in the city of Oklahoma for more than a decade, said he is more concerned with teachers in rural and conservative parts of the State who could feel encouraged to impose their own beliefs on students.
“If someone accompanies the influence of these extreme right organizations in our standards and is interested in inserting more Christianity into our practices as teachers, then they have emboldened,” Baker said. “For me, that is the main concern.”
The leaders of the Oklahoma Legislature led by the Republicans introduced a resolution to reject the standards, but there was not enough republican support to approve it.
Part of that doubt probably arose from a last minute opposition burst organized by pro-trump conservative groups as Moms for Libertythat has a great presence in Oklahoma and threatened the legislators who reject the standards with a main opponent.
“In the last electoral cycles, base conservative organizations have turned seats in Oklahoma by holding the weak Republicans,” the group wrote in a letter signed by several other conservative groups and republican activists. “If you choose to put on the side of the liberal media and make treatment in the back room with the Democrats to block the conservative reform, it will be the next one.”
After a group of parents, educators and other school officials from Oklahoma worked to develop the new social studies standards, Walters gathered an executive committee that consisted mainly of experts outside the state of the groups of conservative experts to review them. He said he wanted to focus more on American exceptionalism and Incorporate the Bible as instructional resource.
Among the Walters appointed for the Review Committee are Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation and a key figure in his 2025 project plan for a conservative administration, and Dennis Prager, a radio programs presenter founded by Prager U, a conservative profit non-profit organization that offers “pro-state” educational materials “for children who say some critics who are not critics who are not critics who are not critics who are not critics.
In a statement to Associated Press, Walters defended students about “unprecedented and historically significant” elements of the 2020 presidential elections.
“The standards do not instruct students to believe; rather, they encourage critical thinking by inviting students to examine real events, review the information available publicly and reach their own conclusions,” he said.
Counting, reviews and audits in it battlefield states Did Trump disputed his confirmed loss? The victory of Democrat Joe Bidenand Trump Lost dozen of judicial cases Challenging the results.
Critics say that the new Walters standard is full of deceptive phrases that seeks to direct the discussion in a private direction.
The Democrats characterized him as another Walters political ploy, widely seen as a potential candidate for the governor in 2026, at the expense of schoolchildren.
“It is a detrimental position and political theater that our children do not need to be subjected,” Senator Mark Mann, a Democrat of Oklahoma City who previously served in the school board for one of the largest districts in the state.
National experts in educational standards also expressed alarm, noting that Oklahoma has Historically highly classified Among the states for their standards.
Brendan Gillis, director of teaching and learning of the American Historical Association that supervised a research project that analyzed the standards in the 50 states, said that Oklahoma’s social studies had been “quite good” until the latest version.
In addition to the concerns about the erroneous information of the elections, Gillis added: “There was also a lot of biblical content that was a bit scathing in existing standards.”
He said that many of the references to Christianity and the Bible misunderstood the history of the country’s foundation and lacked historical nuances.
David Griffith, research director of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a group of conservative education experts, said he was not aware of any other state that has tried to promote the wrong information of the elections in their curricular standards.
He called the new standards a “unfortunate” deviation of the standards of traditionally strong social studies of Oklahoma.
“It is inappropriate to promote conspiracy theories about the elections in the standards,” he said.
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Associated Press Christina A. Cassidy writer in Atlanta contributed to this report.
