In Oklahoma, high school students will now be taught to “identify discrepancies” in the results of the 2020 presidential election effectively instilling suspicion of irregularities that have never been proven.
This is the core of the new school curriculum pushed by State Superintendent of Education Ryan Walters, a Republican loyal to Donald Trump and a central figure in the conservative effort to rewrite the story of the GOP leader’s defeat.
Part of the latest wave of ideological reforms in Republican-led states, the new educational program aims to institutionalize the teaching of conspiracy theories. Students are instructed to analyze graphs and data to detect anomalies in mail-in voting, interruptions in ballot counting in key cities, and even “sudden dumps of ballot batches”–all claims thoroughly debunked by investigations, recounts, and court rulings.
Walters appointed a review committee composed of experts from conservative think tanks, including prominent figures like Kevin Roberts of the Heritage Foundation and Dennis Prager, founder of Prager U, an organization that distributes pro-Trump educational content. The stated goal is clear: to “return to true history” and combat progressive indoctrination, accusing “leftist, elitist” educators of trying to impose a radical worldview on students.
Walters’s revisions also target the omission of Black Lives Matter, the movement born in 2013 to fight systemic racism and police violence against African Americans, and the murder of George Floyd, a Black man killed on May 25, 2020, in Minneapolis by a police officer. The reforms further include efforts to distribute Trump-approved Bibles in classrooms. A key item on Walters’s agenda is his support for the creation of the country’s first religious public charter school publicly funded but privately managed, a move that could gain favor with the conservative-majority Supreme Court.
However, a coalition of parents, teachers, and school administrators has filed a lawsuit to block the new curriculum, accusing it of distorting history and promoting a biased, ideological view of society. They claim the approval process was rushed and opaque, with some additions such as the inclusion of the theory that Covid-19 originated in a Chinese lab, rather than from animal-to-human transmission reportedly inserted just hours before the state board’s vote.
Even among local Republicans, discontent is growing. The governor and legislative leaders voiced concerns, but a proposed resolution to reject the new standards was ultimately defeated under pressure from pro-Trump groups like Moms for Liberty, which threatened political retaliation against dissenters.
Meanwhile, taxpayers will foot a $33 million bill for new textbooks, and as the Christian right moves forward in rewriting public education, many Oklahoma students may see their reality reshaped into propaganda.
