Oklahoma Department of Education Superintendent Ryan Walters unleashed a diatribe against the “Left” which he claims is training students to “hate our country.
Walters raged over his concern that liberal cultural agendas in academic settings will turn the American education system into a fertile breeding ground for homegrown anti-American terrorism.
Walters, who is currently being sued for wrongful termination by former Oklahoma education department employees who allege they were terminated largely because they shared internal communications with outside sources, spoke directly into the camera while wearing an ‘America First’ hat, as seen in the video below.
The Superintendent said he was expressing a “real uncomfortable truth” and claimed the “Left is going to lose their mind” as he warned, “listen, we cannot allow our schools to become terrorist training camps.”
OK Schools Chief Ryan Walters says that public school teachers are the ones responsible for domestic terrorism. He says teachers have turned classrooms into “terrorist training camps” by indoctrinating students to “hate America.” pic.twitter.com/PJXgLueh7Z
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) January 2, 2025
[NOTE: According to The Oklahoman: “Walters is, or has been, a defendant in at least 16 lawsuits filed in state and federal court since he became state superintendent in January 2023. He has lost one of those lawsuits and settled another.”]
Walters’s dark vision of what he thinks the American education system has become is the reason he gives for Oklahoma “getting back to the basics” to “make sure our kids love this country, understand American values, understand the role that the Constitution, the Bible, the Declaration of Independence played in American history.”
Walters, claiming a new mandate for public school education, claimed: “We want patriots and that’s got to be the focus of our schools.”
Walters’s ideas about education — he previously also served as the state’s Secretary of Education — are closely followed in Oklahoma, where he has been a major influence. The Oklahoma Voice reports that its most read story of the year “explored state Superintendent Ryan Walters’ switch from ‘excited’ to ‘disgusted’ over Oklahoma’s social studies standards.”
In the article — which had the subhead “Walters’ social studies, Bible initiatives raise fears of politics in education” — the paper noted that Walters, previously a supporter of the standards, was seeking a “complete overhaul” of them.
[NOTE: Walters’s educational priority — that of developing patriots — doesn’t align with those of America’s pre-eminent education theorist, the pragmatist John Dewey, whose “approach to education is evident in curricula focused on critical thinking skills in which students engage in intellectual reflection and inquiry, critique, test and judge knowledge claims, make connections, apply their understandings in a range of different situations, and go into depth, rather than be given quick answers or rushed through a series of content.”]
