How Oklahoma Is Selling Conspiracy Theories About the 2020 Election as Knowledge to Students.
The state of Oklahoma, once known for its solid educational standards, has taken a new path - one paved with misinformation. From now on, high school students in Oklahoma will not only learn about the Industrial Revolution and women’s suffrage, but they will also be confronted with conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election. A state-sanctioned curriculum that sells fiction as fact and propaganda as pedagogy.
Behind this decision stands Ryan Walters, an education minister whose political career is built on a foundation of Trump loyalty and hostility toward anything he labels as "woke." Walters, who portrays himself as a defender of "true American history," has pushed through the new standards - standards that speak of the "sudden halt of vote counting" and the "security risks of mail-in voting." Terms lifted directly from the dictionary of conspiracy theorists who led a storm on the Capitol after the 2020 election.
What is happening here is nothing less than indoctrination - an attempt to force young people into a worldview built on lies and half-truths. A conscious decision to replace facts with myths, history with propaganda. It is as if a curriculum from a dictatorship is being introduced, where knowledge is replaced by belief, and critical thinking is seen as a threat.
The Spirit of 1933 in Oklahoma's Classrooms
These are scenes reminiscent of dark chapters in history. In the 1930s, political leaders in Germany began using education as a tool of manipulation. Children were taught that their world was surrounded by enemies - that history was a tale of betrayal and heroism, a narrative controlled solely by the ruling party. They were told what to think. They were told who to hate. They were given a reality that wasn’t real.
Now, nearly a century later, Oklahoma continues this sinister curriculum. A state-mandated distortion of history that teaches students to distrust democratic processes - that elections are manipulated, that America is threatened by "radical leftists." A school world where truth is a pawn of politics.
Ryan Walters and his supporters defend these standards as "critical thinking." But what is happening here is the opposite. Because critical thinking requires facts - it requires access to real information, it requires the freedom to ask questions and to challenge answers. But in Oklahoma’s new educational standards, the questions are predetermined, and the answers are already written.
The Path into Darkness
There are those who will say this is exaggerated - that students are capable of distinguishing truth from lies. But that is a dangerous game. Because what is the purpose of education if not the search for truth? What is the meaning of history if not understanding the past in all its complexity? What remains when the state begins to distort reality and impose a worldview on students based on lies?
It is not only the students in Oklahoma who are being betrayed. It is society as a whole. A generation growing up in a fog of misinformation and scapegoats is a generation heading toward a future without understanding and without truth.
The new educational standards in Oklahoma are a warning signal - a signal of how quickly a state, a nation, can be drawn into the vortex of lies. It begins in the classroom, but it does not end there. What becomes of a democracy when its citizens can no longer distinguish between truth and lies? What becomes of a nation that teaches its youth to live in a world of conspiracy and mistrust?
The Narrative of Lies – and the Quiet Resistance
There are teachers in Oklahoma who refuse to accept this new curriculum. People like Aaron Baker, a teacher who has taught U.S. history for over a decade and now fears for his students. "If someone welcomes the influence of these far-right organizations in our standards and is interested in inserting more Christianity into our teaching practices, then they have become emboldened," Baker said. "For me, that is the major concern."
But Baker’s voice is one of few. Many teachers fear they could lose their jobs if they reject the new curriculum. Parents are suing against the standards, but they stand against a political power determined to impose its truth as the only truth.
And while Education Minister Walters claims he wants to promote "critical thinking," every sentence in the new standards shows that it is about suppressing this thinking. In a world where the classroom becomes a battleground and truth becomes a lie, the fight for education is a fight for the soul of a society.
Oklahoma has taken the first step - a step into darkness. The question is whether other states will follow. The question is whether America will wake up before it is too late.
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