In August 2021, Amy Cook, a public high school science teacher in Tulsa, Oklahoma, filed a complaint with the State Department of Education, claiming she had been the victim of implicit racial bias. Cook said a section of a seminar she attended held by a third party, Vector Solutions, Inc., on behalf of Tulsa Public Schools, included “statements that specifically shame White people for past offenses in history, and state that all are implicitly racially biased by nature.”
Here we go.
That the seminar didn’t do any of those things is only part of the story; nevertheless, the state board voted 4-2 to downgrade the accreditation of Tulsa Public Schools, the largest school district in Oklahoma, for seriously detracting “from the quality of the school’s educational program.”
Please.
How absurd was the penalty?
How absurd was the offense?
According to one of the two board members who voted against punishing TPS , “Cook had to make an inference based on the audio that never explicitly said that an individual by virtue of his race or her race or sex is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive.”
And liberals are the snowflakes?
Cook, meanwhile, said she contacted the state only after searching for “over an hour” trying to contact TPS.
(I went to the TPS website. Under “Menu,” there’s a link “Contact Us.” It took four seconds. Plus, she works for TPS. Surely she’s got the number of a superior.)
Cook, who once ran for state Senate, wrote on her website that she models her Christian faith openly in the classroom and also claimed “spiritually damaging programs, liberal brainwashing, and political indoctrination” have infiltrated schools and admits she’s a bit sheltered.
Ya think?
According to The Oklahoman, students noticed, too.
“A student complained Cook posted Bible verses in her classroom . . . and berated the student for placing a non-Christian prayer in the classroom and warned they would ‘burn in Hell’ if they didn’t repent.”
Welcome to the sewer that is HB 1775, one of the worst pieces of legislation ever passed in Oklahoma — and that’s saying something — which aims to prevent critical race theory, the flypaper to which America’s Right attaches all its grievances, from being taught in public schools.
The bill never mentions critical race theory by name — not that state legislators would recognize it if it fell out of a school lunchbox and splattered on the state seal — but the issue, like controlling women’s vaginas, is one of the Stations of the Cross at which all Republican officeholders and candidates must stop and offer blessings and alms.
Oklahoma Secretary of Education Ryan Walters — think Betsy DeVos without the charm — who wants to be the Oklahoma superintendent of public instruction, not only stopped, he pitched a tent.
On June 17, he wrote that “our schools are being co-opted by liberal and socialist agendas — critical race theory, bathroom confusions, DEI, and social/emotional learning.”
The bathrooms are confused?
As to why Walters, who’s education secretary, wants to be the school superintendent, it’s because the superintendent controls the budget and instructional goals. Gov. Kevin Stitt, who appointed Walters — and is just as sanctimonious and preening and disingenuous — would like to control the state’s educational purse and piety strings. Meanwhile, Joy Hofmeister, the current superintendent, switched parties and is now running as a Democrat against Stitt for governor. For his part, Walters said of Hofmeister, “You have failed our kids. You have allowed pornography to enter into our schools. You have allowed critical race theory to enter into our schools.”
The cast of “Ozark” isn’t this toxic.
Walters makes $120,000 per year as an executive director of Every Kid Counts Oklahoma, an organization funded by Charles Koch and the Walton Family Foundation — charter-school expansion supporters — on top of his $40,000/year state gig.
We allow that in Oklahoma?
We allow that in Oklahoma.
But back to the case of our sensitive and selectively indignant science teacher.
The Tulsa World reported that investigators concluded that while the training materials used during the seminar to which Cook objected were fine and TPS didn’t break the letter or spirit of HB 1775 law, a speaker in the seminar had gone off script.
But even that didn’t happen.
In an audio, according to the paper, “is a recording of a male voice reading text verbatim from a visual presentation.”
Verbatim.
Essentially, then, Tulsa Public Schools was punished for something it not only didn’t do that not only didn’t happen but, even if it had, would have had nothing to do with HB 1775, which deals, however terribly, with teacher-student interaction, not teacher training.
The vagueness of legislation against critical-race-theory instruction, nationally, and HB 1775 in Oklahoma, is the point. If you can paralyze teachers into not teaching anything controversial or messy, nothing controversial or messy gets taught — like history, accountability, or humility. And since January 2021, according to PEN America, Republican state legislators have introduced nearly 200 anti-critical-race-theory bills in 40 states.
Which brings us to Nazis.
The Oklahoma House and Senate passed, and the governor signed a bill in July requiring the teaching of the Holocaust for students in grades 6-12.
Wonderful — except there are two words that don’t appear anywhere in the bill: “Hitler” and “Germans.”
Wouldn’t want to offend anyone.
Barry Friedman is an essayist, political columnist, petroleum geology reporter and comedian living in Tulsa, Okla. In addition to “Funny You Should Mention It,” “Road Comic,” “Four Days and a Year Later” and “The Joke Was On Me,” his first novel, “Jacob Fishman’s Marriages,” a book about the worst love story ever, was published by Balkan Press in February. See barrysfriedman.com and friedmanoftheplains.com.
From The Progressive Populist, September 15, 2022
Blog | Current Issue | Back Issues | Essays | Links
About the Progressive Populist | How to Subscribe | How to Contact Us