Bible Teaching in Every Classroom? In Oklahoma, Few Signs It’s Happening.
The New York Times
Oklahoma’s schools superintendent announced in June that every teacher in the state would be expected to teach the Bible. As schools open, there’s little evidence they have changed their curriculums or teaching.
Three days after Oklahoma’s state superintendent, Ryan Walters, directed every teacher in the state’s public schools to teach the Bible this summer, he walked onstage to a standing ovation.
“We’re incredibly proud to be the first state in the country to put the Bible back in the classrooms,” Mr. Walters told the crowd at Sheridan Church, a large evangelical congregation in Tulsa.
The church’s pastor, Jackson Lahmeyer, who leads the national network Pastors for Trump, also hailed the new rule. “We are seeing a miracle take place in our state,” he said, comparing Mr. Walters’s mandate to the end of Roe v. Wade. “Just know that in our books, you’re a hero, man.”
Mr. Walters said when he announced the directive that “immediate and strict compliance is expected” for the 2024-25 school year. But as schools open around Oklahoma this month, there’s little evidence that the Bible’s presence is any changed from last year, or the year before. No Bibles appear to have been purchased, and no curriculum changes have been announced.
Some teachers said they had received no additional guidance from their districts, no new materials and no indication that they should teach differently. Many administrators across the state have said publicly that they will not comply, or that they will not change their curriculums; others have said only that they are still examining the new guidelines. Over the summer, at least eight of the state’s largest districts made public statements indicating they had no immediate plans to alter their curriculums.
“Without a direct plan, nobody feels obligated to do anything,” especially spending taxpayers’ money on purchasing new supplies, said Stacey Woolley, the president of the school board in Tulsa, the state’s largest district. “It’s largely propaganda.”
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