OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) — Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters announced he has chosen an assortment of right-wing political activists, including the main co-author of the controversial ‘Project 2025’ plan, to “overhaul” Oklahoma’s current social studies curriculum standards, which Walters himself helped create.
The announced “overhaul” has garnered Walters criticism from Republicans and Democrats alike.
“It's just going to cause a lot more problems,” Oklahoma State Representative Mark McBride (R-Moore) told News 4 after reading Walters’ news release announcing the plan to overhaul social studies curriculum. “We're going to have more lawsuits, but we've got enough of that going on as it is.”
In the news release, Walters announced he assembled an “A-list executive review committee” to perform a “complete overhaul of Oklahoma’s social studies standards”
“The new approach to social studies standards will ensure the social studies standards are chronologically sound, reinforced, and reiterated through a student’s primary and secondary education, will empower schools to teach from primary sources, and will inspire in students a love of country and a proper understanding of the American founding. It will also eliminate DEI, indoctrination, and return teaching back to the basics in Oklahoma,” Walters’ news release said. “The revised standards will incorporate the introduction of the Bible as an instructional resource that Superintendent Walters announced last week as well as the ensuring that social studies reflect accuracy and not political slanted viewpoints. A renewed emphasis on biography and the study of inspiring leaders in history will be Oklahoma standards more in line with a classical learning model.
The news release went on to list biographies for people Walters chose to serve on an “a-list executive review committee” to oversee and approve the new standards.
One of them is Dennis Prager, the founder of PragerU.
PragerU is a media group that makes history-education videos from the point of a conservative worldview. Their video titles range from “was the civil war about slavery?” to “the inconvenient truth about the democratic party.”
Another man Walters tapped to oversee the new “not-politically slanted” social studies standards is Kevin Roberts.
Roberts is President of the conservative think-tank ‘the Heritage Foundation.’
“Roberts focuses on conservative policy solutions across key issues like education, health care, and border security, aiming to counter the socialist agenda,” Walters’ news release said.
Roberts is an instrumental co-author of the Heritage Foundation’s ‘Project 2025’ plan, a controversial set of far-right policy recommendations the group would like to see enacted should a Republican take the White House by 2025.
The plan would restructure and reclassify federal employees, policies and agencies, including eliminating the U.S. Department of Education.
Roberts also raised controversy when he appeared on a podcast recently and said, “we are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”
“That's kind of some scary stuff,” McBride said. “We talk about not wanting to have an agenda and no indoctrination. But this is the flip side of that. You don't want this woke indoctrination, but it's okay for this type of indoctrination.”
Having a team of national partisan political influencers which few-to-no ties to the state in charge of coming up with Oklahoma social studies curriculum would be a first for the Oklahoma State Department of Education (OSDE).
“Traditionally, when any type of standards are going in for review, we are using our Oklahoma educators, the subject area experts when it comes to that, to the curricula,” said Jena Nelson, the 2021 Oklahoma State Teacher of the year. Nelson also challenged Walters as a Democrat in the 2022 general election.
Nelson says any claims that the current social studies curriculum standards are causing teachers to ‘indoctrinate’ students are not rooted in fact.
“As someone who taught middle school and high school for 17 years, we were focused on making sure that our students were taken care of,” Nelson said. “We were making sure that we were teaching to the standards.”
A quote from Walters in his news release seemed to disagree with Nelson’s assessment that the current standards are not problematic.
“Oklahomans — citizens, parents, and business leaders alike – are disgusted with the lack of civic knowledge, love for our country, and historical education among our young people,” Walters said in the news release. “It is crystal clear that we need to return to more rigorous social studies standards that emphasize the unique and exceptional nature of the American republic, promote a proper understanding of the nation’s founding, and instill pride in our civic traditions and Oklahoma heritage.”
Walters himself actually oversaw the drafting and implementation of those current standards he’s calling to be overhauled when they were revised in 2019.
At that time, Walters was a history teacher at McAlester High School and a runner-up for Oklahoma state teacher of the year.
He was chosen as one of six people to serve on OSDE’s executive committee which drafted, reviewed and approved the 2019 revisions to the social studies curriculum standards.
After those standards were approved in 2019, Walters wrote OSDE leaders a letter.
In the letter, he proudly endorsed the standards — the very standards he now wants overhauled.
“I wanted to express my satisfaction with the new social studies standards,” Walters wrote in the letter. “I believe that educators will find the new standards very helpful; I am excited about all the improvements.”
McBride says that leaves him with a question.
“So is he saying that, ‘oh I'm woke!’… I mean that's a big question there,” McBride said.
“Because he wrote those standards.”
McBride says, no matter what new standards Walters’ new committee comes up with, they can’t be implemented without approval from legislators.
“I do think that the legislature will push back,” McBride said.
If that pushback doesn’t happen, Nelson says she expects Oklahoma’s massive teacher shortage to only grow larger.
“Teachers are afraid right now, they are afraid of what's coming next,” Nelson said. “And then you hear them say, ‘I think it's time for me to start looking for something else,’ because they know that they want to portray an accurate account of history, of civics, of government.”
