Ryan Walters Is Embracing The Culture Wars, But Even Some Republicans Think He Has Gone Too Far
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Ryan Walters, the Oklahoma state superintendent, has taken to attacking teachers as he fights culture wars in public schools.
It was not particularly surprising that Ryan Walters declared Oklahoma schools wouldn’t go “woke” under his leadership as he campaigned for a role that would give him power over the public school system. Many conservatives have championed so-called “parental rights” and claim they must protect kids from learning about such topics, like race and gender.
But since winning the election and taking over as state superintendent for public instruction, his plan for enacting his agenda — attacking teachers and claiming that they’re the linchpin of the indoctrination going on in schools — has rattled many people, including Republicans in his state.
The Oklahoma state superintendent is the head of the state’s Department of Education, oversees the school system, and is influential in the implementation of policies that dictates how the schools operate.
Walters used to be a teacher himself. He taught high school history before Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) appointed him to be the Oklahoma secretary of education in 2020. He stayed in that role until April, overseeing state boards of education and advising the governor on education policy, including during his first few months as superintendent.
Since being sworn in, Walters has made several appearances on Fox News, calling Oklahoma teachers “Marxist” over their support for pay equity and decisions they make about what books to have in their classrooms, and arguing that “parents will be in charge of our educational system, not these ‘woke’ teachers unions.” He has compared teachers to terrorists and has told employees at the Oklahoma State Department of Education (OSDE) that they will be fired if they “leak” to the media.
A handful of Republicans have accused Walters of being preoccupied with fighting culture wars rather than working on actual policies and budgeting — things that could improve education in Oklahoma, a state that came in 49th in the national rankings (the most recent ranking available), according to a 2021 EdWeek report. Some rural schools in the state have adopted a four-day school week to save money. Lawmakers have recently approved a pay raise, but the education system is still facing a teacher shortage.
“I would have thought he and I would have agreed on 80% of things. ... His ego has gotten in the way of who he really is,” said Republican state Rep. Mark McBride, the chair of the education subcommittee in the Oklahoma House.
“I don’t have the luxury of fighting the culture wars,” McBride said. “I need to do my job. I’m focused on funding, on money.”
Similarly, Republican state Sen. DeWayne Pemberton told the Enid News & Eagle in March that he thought Walters was too focused on “cultural issues” and that “everything he comes out with is divisive.”
“I’d like to see him settle down and actually start talking about reading and writing and arithmetic and how to bring up test scores and how we can make things better for teachers,” Pemberton said.
Since Walters took office and began overseeing the OSDE, the department has lost several employees, including those who were in charge of applying for federal education grants from the U.S. Department of Education. At an Oklahoma House education subcommittee meeting in May, McBride said he was concerned that the agency had left money for low-income families on the table and that some schools could lose funding. When he asked Walters if his department had applied for the grants, Walters denied that his office failed to apply for grants and blamed his predecessor for problems his agency is facing. (The status of the federal grants remains unclear.)
He also quickly pivoted to attacking teachers.
“I don’t negotiate with folks who would sabotage our kids,” Walters said. “That’s a terrorist organization in my book.”
This is the kind of rhetoric that McBride says goes too far. “I have aunts, sisters, and so many family members who are teachers,” he said. “He’s calling my family terrorists and that bothers me.”
The Oklahoma Education Association ― the teachers union ― pushed back on his incendiary rhetoric.
“In less radical times, the State Superintendent of Public Instruction calling the educators who serve in our public school classrooms ‘terrorists’ would be shocking,” the union said in a statement. “However, this inflammatory and demonizing rhetoric continues to escalate in ways that endanger our educators and undermine public education.”
I’d like to see him settle down and actually start talking about reading and writing and arithmetic and how to bring up test scores and how we can make things better for teachers.GOP state Sen. DeWayne Pemberton
At an OSDE meeting earlier this month, Walters showed attendees a “public awareness campaign” video that teachers said made them fear for their safety.
The video showed clips of speeches from the national teachers union urging its members to fight for the rights of LGBTQ+ children, as well as shots of pages from Maia Kobabe’s “Gender Queer,” a memoir about gender identity that has become a target of conservative ire. Interspersed with these clips were ones that alleged to show teachers defending child sexual abuse — which many teachers saw as a warning that they’d be considered child abusers if they supported LGBTQ+ students.
“It literally brought me to tears,” a teacher named Jami Cole told a local Fox affiliate about the video. “The only message that I saw from that is, ‘I’m coming for you teachers,’ and I felt threatened. I think that’s the majority of teachers in that room, we all felt directly threatened.”
Hearing that teachers were uncomfortable did not deter Walters. “Liberal activist teachers have infiltrated the classroom and prefer to indoctrinate rather than educate our kids,” he said in an email to HuffPost. “Oklahoma has great teachers who do not impose social justice warrior points on kids.”
“I don’t worry about weak RINO’s that compromise our families rather than fight for our constitution,” he wrote, using a term referring to “Republicans in Name Only.” “They’ve sold their values for 30 pieces of silver to the radical teacher union. They’d rather ignore porn in schools than take a stand for our children.”
Walters’ claim that schools have porn is at the center of an ongoing battle about book-banning in the state.
Across the country, GOP officials have promoted the false notion that books with LGBTQ+ characters and themes are actually sexually explicit. Walters is no exception. He has supported bills that would allow for books to be removed from classrooms, as well as a measure passed in 2021 that bars educators from teaching that any race or gender is superior to another. That law specifically bans “critical race theory” — a college-level academic theory about how racism has shaped public policies — in Oklahoma schools.
At a hearing last month, one Republican told Walters that the superintendent was overly concerned about the threat of CRT in classrooms.
“Critical race theory, while I don’t like it, it’s neo-Marxist ― it’s highly technical,” state Rep. Marcus McEntire said. “It’s a literary criticism is what it is. I’m worried that your use of CRT, that you’re broadening it to what it’s not.”
After months of Walters claiming that school libraries had porn, OSDE passed a rule banning sexually explicit material from schools, without defining what was considered in violation of the rule. In April, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond said the agency had overstepped by not going through the legislature for rule-making and that the new rules could not go into effect
“This is a talking point and I don’t think this is happening in Oklahoma, but I don’t know if it is,” McBride told a local Fox affiliate at the time, referring to schools allowing pornographic materials. “Show me. I wanna see it.” He formally asked Walters to a House education subcommittee meeting to show McBride the materials he was worried about. Walters has not done so.
Like many districts across the country, Oklahoma schools already have a protocol for challenging books, and parents are allowed to keep their child from accessing certain materials. McBride said he believes in some censorship in schools — but that the policies in place are sufficient and that Walters’ tactics are unnecessary.
“You can have a conversation about books, but you don’t need to go on Fox News about it,” he said. “You don’t need to be tweeting, you don’t need to call teachers terrorists.”
