This upcoming school year, thousands of high school students in Oklahoma will be required to “learn” about President Trump’s discredited claims that fraud marred and corrupted the 2020 election.

This course will not cover debunked conspiracy theories. Instead, it will be an official, approved segment of the state’s social studies curriculum that Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction and Republican right-wing advocate Ryan Walters developed. At a board meeting earlier this year, Walters described the curriculum’s purpose as “ensuring our kids have a well-rounded education and understand American exceptionalism, understand civics, and understand our Constitution and those constitutional principles.”

The new curriculum includes a section that requires students to “analyze contemporary turning points of 21st-century American society.” It requires that high school students “identify discrepancies in 2020 elections results by perusing graphs and other information,” informing educators that students should examine the supposed “security risks of mail-in balloting,” ballot dumps, and the “halting of ballot-counting in select cities.” The curriculum also states educators should point to the election’s “unforeseen record number of voters” as a sign that something was amiss. Yes, you read that correctly.

Walters stated the purpose of incorporating this section was to teach “students to think for themselves” and “not be spoon-fed left-wing propaganda.” Walters himself believes there are “legitimate concerns” about the 2020 election’s integrity that were “raised by millions of Americans in 2020.”

Walters is profoundly incorrect. At present, numerous courts nationwide have decisively debunked all claims of fraud in the 2020 election, declaring them totally bereft of merit. Trump and his supporters’ claims that such results were questionable or fraudulent are sour grapes. In essence, the new curriculum is simply a hodgepodge of unsubstantiated allegations.

The individuals involved in developing the standards also created controversy. Walters announced that far-right-wing media personalities and policy advocates such as Dennis Prager and Kevin Roberts, the Heritage Foundation president and the architect of Project 2025, were instrumental in crafting the standards. To add insult to injury, Walters laughably insisted,  in a statement that also peddled unfounded conspiracy theories about the media’s role in the election, that his office’s changes to the curriculum are uncontroversial. Such a comment is akin to stating water is dry.

The so-called curriculum also champions other right-wing propaganda, such as indisputably teaching students COVID-19 came from a lab in China,  a theory scientists have so far proven is false. The curriculum heavily promotes Christianity and Christian principles and theology, standards identical to Walters’s previous Christian nationalist doctrine. This includes requiring every classroom in Oklahoma to keep a copy of the Bible, an order that residents are currently contesting as infringing upon their and their children’s First Amendment rights.

Moms for Liberty, a far-right activist organization, sent a letter to Republican members of the Oklahoma legislature lauding the new curriculum as “truth-filled, anti-woke, and unapologetically conservative.” Additionally, they issued a warning: “In the last few election cycles, grassroots conservative organizations have flipped seats across Oklahoma by holding weak Republicans accountable. If you choose to side with the liberal media and make backroom deals with Democrats to block conservative reform, you will be next.”

If Oklahoma conservatives and Republicans resemble the GOP that currently dominates Congress, they will sheepishly fall in line with right-wing conservative demands.

Trump has continued to promote the “big lie” he was the 2020 presidential election’s real winner. The fact is that Trump has only been victorious in two of his three presidential campaigns. Trump won in 2016 by securing a higher Electoral College vote count, despite losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton. In 2024, Trump defeated Democratic candidate Kamala Harris in both the Electoral College and popular vote.

He did not defeat Joe Biden in 2020 any way you count it.

Something tells me Ryan Walters and his posse of intellectually dishonest right-wing renegades know this to be the case, but they willfully argue otherwise because reveling in such dishonesty is more politically and economically profitable for them. Perhaps they should remind themselves that such behavior is hardly the Christian way to behave.

–

Copyright 2025 Elwood Watson, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate

Elwood Watson is a professor of history, Black studies, and gender and sexuality studies at East Tennessee State University. He is also an author and public speaker.