The Board of Education on Thursday advanced new academic standards for social studies that would require public schools to teach the Bible.
Academic standards outline what students are expected to learn in each grade and subject, but they don’t dictate how teachers teach or mandate any specific curriculum. In Oklahoma, they are revisited on a six-year cycle that aligns with textbook adoption. The Legislature must approve the final version.
Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters has pushed the state’s public schools to teach the Bible as a historical resource.
Mentions of Christianity and the Bible appear more than 40 times and for students as young as first grade in the revised social studies standards. That’s compared to one time in the current iteration.
For example, secondgrade teachers would be expected to instruct students to “identify stories from Christianity that influenced the American colonists, founders, and culture, including the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.
By a 5-1 vote, the board approved the new version. They considered delaying the vote to give the three new members, Ryan Deatherage, Michael Tinney and Chris VanDenhende, appointed this month, more time to review the information. Walters urged them to proceed.
More than 30 organizations, churches and religious leaders signed a letter opposing the standards and urging the Board of Education to reject them.
“After careful review of the draft academic standards for social studies, we believe that the representation of religious, spiritual, ethical, and nonreligious traditions and communities within the standards improperly and erroneously privileges Christianity,” they wrote.
Several conservative pundits were appointed by Walters to oversee the process. They included radio host and PragerU founder Dennis Prager, conservative talk show host Steve Deace, Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, and Texan David Barton, an activist working to overturn church-state separation through his nonprofit, WallBuilders.
The board also approved new science standards.
The Legislature must also approve new standards.
Jennifer Palmer has been a reporter with Oklahoma Watch since 2016 and covers education. Contact her at (405) 7610093 or jpalmer@oklahomawatch.org. Follow her on Twitter @ jpalmerOKC.
