New Oklahoma Curriculum Requires Students To Learn 2020 Election Fraud Conspiracies
The new standards are "the most unapologetically conservative, pro-America social studies standards in the nation," according to State Superintendent Ryan Walters.
In the new school year, thousands of Oklahoma students will be required to learn about 2020 election fraud conspiracy theories as part of a new curriculum developed by the state's controversial superintendent, Ryan Walters. Walters, who has come under fire in recent months for an effort to require Oklahoma classrooms to stock Bibles and display the Ten Commandments, has said that the addition "empowers students to investigate and understand the electoral process."
Under the state's new curriculum, high school students will be taught 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."
While it's not necessarily unreasonable to want students to learn about the dispute over the 2020 election, the standards' framing of the controversy (which turned up no evidence of election interference) and Walters' comments about it make it clear that teachers are meant to shed doubt on the veracity of the election.
"The purpose of the standard is simple: we want students to think for themselves, not be spoon-fed left wing propaganda," Walters said in a statement to The Washington Post in March. "Students deserve to examine every aspect of our elections, including the legitimate concerns raised by millions of Americans in 2020."
The standards also contain passages directing teachers to ensure that students can "identify the source of the COVID-19 pandemic from a Chinese lab," and "explain the effects of the Trump tax cuts, child tax credit, border enforcement efforts."
The standards quickly sparked controversy when they were first published in February, especially when Walters admitted he added the 2020 election fraud section after the release of an earlier version for public comment. After the state Senate defeated an effort from a Republican lawmaker to stop the election denial section of the standards from being implemented, Walters announced on April 29 that the state would move forward with "the most unapologetically conservative, pro-America social studies standards in the nation."
The curriculum change is just one of a battery of recent attempts to inject partisan politics into public school curricula. While blue states have faced criticism from the right for injecting critical race theory into the classroom, many red states have engaged in far more galling efforts to politicize classroom instruction. Louisiana attempted to mandate that classrooms display posters of the Ten Commandments before being stopped in federal court. Oklahoma, under Walters' tutelage, has gone so far as to require classrooms to stock Bibles—and teach from them.
