Oklahoma's Department of Education, led by far-right Superintendent Ryan Walters, tried to sneak a provision into the state's social studies curriculum that would force teachers to teach students that there were "discrepancies" in the 2020 presidential election, the Oklahoma Voice reported on Friday.
President Donald Trump and the Republican Party have been lying for years that the 2020 election was stolen from Dear Leader. Republicans have made baseless allegations of fraud they’ve never provided any evidence for, election deniers have run for office explicitly on the platform of making sure future elections aren’t “stolen,” and Trump himself has led a successful purge of GOP lawmakers who dared admit that he was wrong for saying the election was stolen and inciting an insurrection over it.
But the move by the state’s Education Department takes that lie to the next level, forcing it into the school’s curriculum so that impressionable kids view the Big Lie as canon, rather than being taught the actual history that Trump and his GOP defenders lied about fraud and incited a riot to help Trump remain in power despite his defeat.
According to the Oklahoma Voice, the new curriculum would make high school students “identify discrepancies in 2020 elections results,” including “sudden halting of ballot-counting in select cities in key battleground states, sudden batch dumps, an unforeseen record number of voters and the unprecedented contradiction of ‘bellwether county’ trends.”
The Oklahoma Voice reported that Walters absurdly claimed that the new curriculum is “not set up to either support or negate a specific outcome in the 2020 Presidential Election.”
“Our standards are designed to teach students how to investigate and calculate the specific details surrounding that (or any) election,” Walters said in a statement to the outlet. “In order to oppose or support the outcome, a well rounded student should be able to make their own conclusions using publicly available data and details.”
However, even putting the idea into kids’ heads that there were “discrepancies” in the 2020 election is a disgusting distortion of the truth and history.
The only thing students should be taught is that Trump and his GOP defenders lied about fraud in order to explain away his loss and to spur an uprising to help keep him in office.
The new curriculum is not yet in place. According to the Oklahoma Voice, the Oklahoma Legislature has 30 legislative days to either approve or reject the change.
"If they do nothing, the proposal would take effect as written, according to state law. Gov. Kevin Stitt would have veto power if a legislative resolution lands on his desk. The current social studies standards remain in effect until new standards are approved," the Oklahoma Voice reported.
But the Oklahoma Voice reported that GOP leaders in the Legislature aren’t objecting to the new curriculum.
“As far as what’s in that curriculum, I have not looked at it yet, and so we’ll circle back and look at it and see exactly what it says,” Senate Pro Tem Lonnie Paxton said, according to the Oklahoma Voice. “But that is history. We can always talk about what happened in 2020 and why people felt like they were disenfranchised and also talk about what was good about it, what was bad about it but it’s all part of the discussion.”
Walters has a long history of using the state’s school system to pander to Trump.
In November, Walters tried to force schools to show a video in which he criticized the “radical left” and “woke teachers’ unions,” and asked students to pray for Trump—a blatant violation of the separation of church and state.
And in another violation of the separation of church and state, Walters also tried to purchase 55,000 Bibles for Oklahoma schools, and ensure that one of the Bibles the state could purchase was the Bible that Trump endorsed and profited off of. On Monday, the Oklahoma State Supreme Court blocked Walters from being able to purchase the books.