Mutually Exclusive Public-School Goals: Education or Cultural/Religious Indoctrination?

Mutually Exclusive Public-School Goals: Education or Cultural/Religious Indoctrination?

“The Bible is indispensable in understanding the development of Western civilization and American history. To ensure our students are equipped to understand and contextualize our nation, its culture, and its founding, every student in Oklahoma will be taught the Bible in its historical, cultural, and literary context.” 

Oklahoma State Superintendent of Instruction Ryan Walters

We live in an increasingly competitive world, but we are downsizing or eliminating the necessary components of training and educating the rising generation to engage in that economic battle. After the Eisenhower response to the 1957 Soviet “first-in-space” orbital satellite launch (Sputnik), education, technology and infrastructure became our national priorities. The educational opportunities provided by the post-WWII GI bill invested billions into preparing our war veterans to rebuild America into the fully super-competent nation it was and soon became again. Soon, US public education led the world in reading, math and science. Our space program prospered – we were able land men on the Moon by 1969 – and, applying global testing to our high school-level performance, we remained first in those educational standards.

Reallocating our federal resources to fighting a litany of wars (from Vietnam all the way to Afghanistan), pushing “austerity” while exploding our deficit, the emphasis on the big three drivers of solidifying and growing our economy – education, technology and infrastructure – faded. By the 1990s and beyond, comparative international testing in reading, math and science – standardized under the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) – had pushed the US between 19th and 38th, depending on subject matter.

Defying economic ground rules, the “guns or butter” paradigm, the United States cut taxes for the rich while expanding benefit programs (SNAP, Medicaid, Affordable Care Act, Veterans’ benefits, etc.), massively upping our military budget to compete with the Soviet Union (and soon China) and to fund those never-ending conflicts, most of which addressed armed challenges in the Middle East and adjacent Central Asia. Economic orthodoxy maintained that because waging war is so expensive (the “guns”), nations engaged in major conflicts need to tighten their fiscal belts (no “butter” programs or tax cuts). We didn’t. We borrowed instead.

Our deficit exploded (it is north of $37 trillion today), and the global marketplace has extracted increasing interest rates from our resulting borrowings (on so-called “treasury” bonds). GOP/MAGA priorities still run on the notion that cutting taxes for the rich (labeling them the “job creators” sounded good) is an economic growth amplifier (so-called “trickle down”/supply-side economics), even though that cause and effect has NEVER happened. The Big Beautiful Bill repeats that proven falsehood, but except for military expansion, self-defeating austerity is now the definition of the United States today.

Biden-era infrastructure programs have been cut or reduced, federal support for education has been dramatically reduced (higher education, which teetered on the “unaffordable” edge of the proverbial cliff, has been given a good, hard shove towards the bottom) to the point where the Department of Education itself is being phased out. Although it existed as a wobbly, ill-defined government agency earlier, the modern U.S. Department of Education was established by President Jimmy Carter, who signed it into law in October 1979. As other nations, notably China, expand their entire educational systems, from early education to graduate PhD programs in plasma physics, we are defunding what matters, leaving educational priorities to the states. The Trump administration is defunding research at the most well-established American universities, under a misstated and exaggerated effort to root out DEI and antisemitism, literally throwing the baby our with the bathwater.

We may have thought that the Supreme Court (Stone vs Graham, 1980) made the notion of religious instruction in public schools unconstitutional (vs a generic, non-advocacy examination of “religion” in an historical context). The Courted noted that a Kentucky requirement that the Ten Commandments be posted in public school classrooms "had no secular legislative purpose" and was "plainly religious in nature" – a rather clear statement of the separation of church and state. Nevertheless, the notion of making Christianity our “official” faith and actually teaching bible studies, under an unambiguous advocacy perspective, is still alive and well.

Like the Kentucky effort, the recent Louisiana “ten commandments” in every public classroom mandate may have been struck down by a federal trial court, although appeals are rising, but the willingness to challenge that “separation” doctrine seems to be accelerating in red state America, with hints of support from the reconfigured Supreme Court. Subsequent rulings and realities are roiling with controversy. Even House Speaker Mike Johnson (R/LA) believes the US can name Christianity as our official religion without violating the Constitution. He is a lawyer?

In May, after the recusal of Associate Justice, Amy Coney Barrett, a 4-4 split US Supreme Court let stand an Oklahoma Supreme Court’s holding that by chartering a religious school, the state would “evangelize” a particular faith which violated state legislation as well as the Oklahoma and federal constitutions (St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School v. Gentner Drummond, Attorney General of Oklahoma). The Supreme Court has yet to affirm that particular result, however. In June, the Supreme Court delivered a 6-3 decision in Mahmoud v. Taylor, affirming that parents have the constitutional right to protect their children from classroom instruction that conflicts with their deeply held religious beliefs.

Religious zeal keeps pounding and testing that First Amendment (the “Establishment Clause”), finding more ways to bring the evangelical version of the Bible into the classroom. With a World Population Review of American public schools placing Oklahoma a dismal 48th, amid an ongoing teacher shortage in his state, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters “has declared… in an unprecedented move, that educators coming to Oklahoma from a handful of more liberal states would have to take a test to ensure that they’re not too ‘woke.’

“‘If you’re coming from these states, you will take a test through the state department to show you’re aligned to our standards,’ Walters said in a press conference in late July. ‘You’re not going to come here and teach that there’s 27 genders ... you’re not going to undermine American exceptionalism by teaching anti-American and anti-semitic hate.’

“Though [website] Scary Mommy is unaware of any state that teaches anti-semitism, anti-Americanism, or the specifics of 27 genders, Walters specifically called out educators from New York and California as needing to pass the test. He also mentioned ‘seven or eight’ other states officials were ‘look[ing] at’ that may also be subjected to the new test… While Walter’s predicted roll-out has not occurred in the two weeks he predicted in July, and he has not disclosed the content of the test itself, he did share that it was being developed by PragerU, a conservative media company that has been pushing (sometimes successfully) to have its ideologically-rooted curricula included in public school classrooms.

“Walters has not shied from political controversy. From requiring Bibles to and prayer in schools to being so against “critical race theory” that he felt ‘skin color’ should not be part of the discussion of the Tulsa Massacre, Walters has established himself as a conservative firebrand. More recently, he spearheaded new curriculum standards in Oklahoma schools that require teaching of the unproven (and likely false) ‘Lab Leak’ theory of Covid-19 and the (demonstrably false) idea that the 2020 election was subjected to rampant fraud.” Jamie Kenney for ScaryMommy.com (August 13th). With no major colleges or universities with strong academic reputation, Oklahoma has opted for indoctrination over education. I wonder how that works for a state where fossil fuel extraction defines that economy… if its rising generations want a more viable future.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I doubt our top employers will embrace Oklahoma students well-schooled in anti-woke conspiracy theories but devoid in the STEM skills that define our future.