Oklahoma high schools to teach 2020 election conspiracy theories as fact

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: The Guardian

Sat 17 May 2025 18.18 EDT


As part of the latest Republican push in red states to promote ideologies sympathetic to Donald Trump, Oklahoma’s new social studies curriculum will ask high school students to identify “discrepancies” in the 2020 election results.

The previous standard for studying the 2020 election merely said: “Examine issues related to the election of 2020 and its outcome.” The new version is more expansive: “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.”

The revised curriculum standard comes at the behest of Ryan Walters, the state school superintendent, who has publicly voiced his support for Trump. In October, Walters lauded Trump in an interview, saying that “Trump’s won the argument on education”. Walters, who has also advocated for ending “wokeness” in public schools, went on to say: “We have education bureaucrats that are left-wing, elitist, that think they know best for families, and they have become so radicalized that our families are going: ‘What is going on here?’”

Oklahoma’s new social studies standards for K-12 public school students, already infused with references to the Bible and national pride, were revised at Walters’ direction. The Republican official has spent much of his first term in office not only lauding Trump but also feuding with teachers’ unions and local school superintendents.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/17/oklahoma-high-schools-election-conspiracy-theories

[OrlandoDem2]

1. Time to boycott everything Oklahoma. Shouldn't be too hard.

[KPN]

20. With you on that. I think every Democratic Party -- and D Party supporting organization, group and affiliate should

make this a visible, loud, non-stop and aggressive campaign: BOYCOTT OKLAHOMA!!!

NOW!

[Bernardo de La Paz]

2. "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- Orwell . . . nt

[joshdawg]

3. Surprised he is not advocating that the earth is flat,

the moon landing was staged, and trump is sane.
What an idiot!

[Botany]

4. There is stupid and then there is Oklahoma stupid which takes it to another level of unAmerican idiocy.

Are historical facts inconvenient to your Christo Fascist agenda? Then just rewrite history.*
Saudi Arabia funds this kind of education in Pakistan and Afghanistan with their madrassas
that are used “to teach” young men to grow up and be God Warriors for the Taliban. In America
they call this a Christian Education where science, facts, history, and critical thinking are not
part of the curriculum but are called “Being Woke” or “DEI” or just “CRT” or just not spoken about.

* America was built on racism, sexism, slavery, genocide, and Christian extremism which for
years were kept out of public education as separation of church and state but that America
that “Shining City on the Hill” is being burned to the ground by the GOP, Musk, Trump, Oligarchs,
Christo Fascists, right wing media and web sites and Vlad’s criminal network.

Teaching that slavery and the genocide of the native peoples was wrong and evil is now going
to banned and replaced with stories about the Africans from East Central Africa who were made
to be slaves just got a nice boat ride to America. Rewriting History in the name of Jesus by the
least Christian people you could find is the goal.

[gab13by13]

5. I call them blatant lies,

calling them conspiracy theories gives them a shred of truth. I believe the conspiracy theory that Oswald didn't kill JFK.

[surfered]

6. They'll also teach the earth is flat, the moon is made of green cheese, and man lived at the same time as the dinosaurs.

[GiqueCee]

8. There are already WAY too many...

... deluded souls that actually believe everything you mentioned, maybe with the exception of the moon thing, but that's only because they hadn't thought of it yet.
We have a thoroughly obnoxious neighbor who is convinced that the Earth is indeed flat, and no amount of logic or science can sway him. His arguments in support of this idiotic belief are incoherent gibberish. The moon is flat, too; why do you think you can only see one side of it? It all goes downhill from there, to almost speaking in tongues.
And he home-schools his kids. I pity them.

[surfered]

10. It will affect them

[Bengus81]

15. Hmm...Don't RW dumbshits call that kind of teaching "indoctrination"?? And taught by "guberment schools"?

Pot meet the KETTLE..............

[MoseShrute]

7. As a life-long okie...

It’s hard for me to believe this is the state that produced Will Rogers and Woody Guthrie. That’s what multiple generations of hard core rw blather from The Daily Oklahoman, the newspaper out of OKC, will do. It was Fux sNews before there was Fux sNews. Oklahoma has been either last or one of the worst 3-4 states in educational results for 40 years now. The lunatic ryan walters has his eyes set on Felon47’s massive rump to be the Groom of the Stool, but he must not be doing something correctly because he’s still here. Damnit. There is a great book, Waltzing With the Ghost of Tom Joad, that perfectly explains why Oklahoma was the 6th poorest state in the nation back in the 1930s and still is today. Main reasons: generational lack of education.

[BumRushDaShow]

9. And...

(I actually saw a "summer stock" production of that, I think in Portsmouth, NH, back in the '70s when visiting my cousins who lived up in the area back then )

And as a weather hobbyist, they have been threatening the gutting of the Storm Prediction Center that is located right there in Norman, OK.

[Bengus81]

16. Also the State that aviator Wiley Post was from. He had some skeletons in the closet

but did great things for aviation before he was killed in 1935. While flying the Lockheed Vega he discovered the jet stream seven or eight years before the claim that WWII pilots discovered it.

He had Goodyear rubber make him a pressurized flying suit in the 30's for high altitude flying.

There's a book called Forgotten Eagle about his life that is a fantastic read.

[Paladin]

11. Thanks for making Texas look enlightened by comparison, Oklahoma.

Normally it takes UT whipping OU in college football to accomplish that.

Of course, it's just a matter of time before Greg Abbott, Dan Patrick, Ted Cruz, and the rest of the Texas Republican leadership douchebags try to do the same thing to our public schools. Making Texas look stupid is what they live for.

[paleotn]

12. A fascist education!

What better way to say you're a state filled with illiterate, god bothering fucktards!!!!!

[bronxiteforever]

13. Trump is the Fuhrer of OK.

History does rhyme.

[samnsara]

17. Hopefully there are parents who will remove their kids during that indoctrination

..when i worked with child abuse and neglect prevention non profits we would make presentations in the schools about Good Touch/Bad Touch and we had to present the info to a parent group before we even were allowed into the classrooms.

[oldmanlynn]

18. As soon as they produce text, that is clearly wrong and they're teaching them the wrong things

They will be sued and they will lose

[KPN]

19. Oh boy, that's a doozy! The transformation is apparently complete. We are now officially and unquestionably

living on Bizzaro World. .... I'd say remind me never ever to travel to or through Oklahoma again, but I already made that commitment a long while ago.

[appleannie1]

21. When are they going to teach that wind turbines cause cancer?

Hitler employed the same tactics and actually got children to turn in their parents.

[mdbl]

22. Jesus what an asshole.

If I were a parent in that state I would try and start a class-action lawsuit against teaching falsehoods to public school children.