Hi everyone!
Oklahoma has implemented a teachers' test for new educators coming into the state, saying that while they want more teachers, they don't want their students to be indoctrinated into critical race and gender ideology or hatred of America, as is taught by schools in many blue states. Oklahoma is the first state to add this kind of America First certification test.
For sure, those teachers probably had the best intentions when they sought to teach a revised history that included all America's problems as well as America's wins. But since that initial good impulse, the curriculum has been flooded with anti-Christian sentiment, antisemitic ideas, and has come to focus far more on America's flaws than the good sides—and I think we can all agree that the good stuff far outweighs the bad.
"We offered the largest signing bonuses for teachers in the country. If you’re in the top 10 percent of teachers in the country, we give you $50,000 in Oklahoma. So we’ve seen teachers come from blue states, red states all over to come to Oklahoma. They especially are fleeing the teachers unions, the grip that they’ve had on them in these blue states," said state education superintendent Ryan Walters.
Oklahoma has engaged with Prager U to put the test together and it will ask teachers simple questions, like "what is a woman," as well as other questions about American history and civics. Perhaps teachers will have to cite the year of America's founding, 1776, and anyone who says 1619 will be denied a position in the state.
So what is Oklahoma fighting against? California adopted new educational guidelines that say math is racist. Oregon, also, promoted critical race theory in mathematics. Disney has taken an active role in perpetrating LGBTQ curriculum, putting funds behind GLSEN (pronounced 'glisten') to help teachers incorporate gender identity and trans advocacy into lessons not just in the US but globally.
In Brooklyn, NY, when my son was going to school, he was taught that he was racist, and so were his parents, and so were his grandparents. None of this was true, but he was white, so this is what he learned about himself. These schools are the same ones that taught our kids that education wasn't important when they kept shutting schools down over a cold. Oklahoma may be on to something.
