New Orleans There was a news item that was a bit of good news for school children and teachers in Oklahoma. The elected Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters is resigning his office to take a job running a nonprofit whose aim is to fight teachers’ unions around the country. Many have followed his exploits in the state, attracting controversy from the right and the left. He has sought to force Bible teaching in public schools. There was also a case that made it to the US Supreme Court about providing funding for a religious charter school, which even they wouldn’t allow. Some may remember that it wasn’t so many years ago that the teachers in Oklahoma, joining brothers and sisters in other surprising states of West Virginia and Arizona, struck to force the conservative, Republican legislature to give them a raise, so any of us can just imagine how well many teachers got along with the Superintendent.
Another mess Walters stirred in the short two years of his term was requiring a so-called “woke” test to be passed by any teachers from New York or California seeking to transfer their licenses and instruct students in Oklahoma. Of course, the test is discriminatory on its face, but that’s not my point today. Preger University, the equally controversial super conservative school that has become one of the favorites of the American far right, was so proud of writing the test for the Oklahoma that they bought a full-page ad in the New York Times with all of the questions, including a QR code so you could take it at home. They claimed that they thought – or at least hoped – that all of the readers would feel the same way.
Let’s look at this litmus test for teachers in Oklahoma, so we can all get a sense of how Walters and Praeger want to impact the curriculum.
Four of the first five questions poke at the cultural war issues around gender as does question #7, which wants a teacher to know how the Supreme Court ruled in the 2025 case Mahmoud v. Taylor? Let’s be honest, that’s a trick question if any of us are supposed to believe that decision was a mark of our time, rather than being a modern Dred Scott. Given the slant so far, a guess that this has to do LGBTQ instruction is likely to get you by though, if you’ve picked up the drift of the “values” being pushed.
Eleven questions, thank goodness, are about basic civics, so those are simple, although beyond me, why they are “woke.” They include how many are in the senate and what’s the US highest court. Seven are pretty simple questions about the founding of the United States, like who were the first three presidents, and who is called the “father” of the country. Then there are two about the Civil War, one about Martin Luther King, Jr., and one about the Great Depression, all of which are gimmes. The final five somewhere between civics and symbols: why originally 13 stars, a phrase from the pledge of allegiance, name of the national anthem, the name of the holiday for veterans, and “from whom does the US government derive power?” There are two questions about religion, which are interesting, because “In God We Trust” would be the wrong answer for someone trying to game the test, as would anyone who thought that freedom of religion in America is designed to “make Christianity the national religion,” which some on the right are now pushing aggressively. Of course, there was the predictably mandatory question about the Second Amendment and guns.
What was the point of this test by Praeger for Oklahoma migrant teachers from blue states? It was hard not to get 100% on the test, so if I were looking for a job, and this test qualified me, I could now teach in Oklahoma. Out of 34 questions New Yorkers and Californians would have to miss more than 10 questions to get a failing grade, and, to tell the truth, that would be hard to do. Not sure how this is supposed to root out “woke?”
The point is clearly not values or history or civics, because most of the softball tosses right over the plate. The point was “signaling” conservative interests in the culture war about differences in gender, about slavery, about guns, about religion, while insidiously trying to claim the ground on popular control, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and more, as if they are unique to states like Oklahoma and places like Praeger.
Though it is easy to see that conservatives of this ilk would like to control the curriculum, luckily, schools in the United States are controlled locally, not by the state. Not surprisingly, Praeger and Walters didn’t include that question and answer on the test.