Having followed the wacky behavior of Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters since he was elected, I knew he was not the sharpest tack in the box. But I didn’t realize he was downright stupid.
While reading Ron Filipowski’s blog, I came across this crazy statement:
… OK Schools Chief Ryan Walters says the people most responsible for these acts of domestic terrorism are … public school teachers. Of course. “You have schools teaching kids to hate their country, saying this country is evil. You have teachers unions pushing this on our kids. We cannot allow our schools to become terrorist training camps.”
This is an insult to every teacher. And it reveals Ryan Walters’ ignorance and malice.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
who defines what causes terror. because a dude parked outside a tourist hotel in an exploding truck sounds a lot like terror, yet nobody can seem to say so.
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Walters is a good example of the Republican Problem, which can be described thusly:
Republicans never know how things actually work.
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Republicans know how to whip up fear and prejudice to distract voters from the corporate driven agenda of tax cuts for the rich and deregulation so that corporate poison the environment.
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I can count on the fingers of one-fifth of one hand the number of voters who are even aware of such things.
And even if they were, they wouldn’t understand it.
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I’m not surprised that another dumber than dumb lunatic blames teachers for something most if not all of them have no connection with.
I started teaching in 1975, and after Reagan’s cheery-picked lying A Nation at Risk report in 1983, the blame public teachers game started.
I’ve read or heard teachers blamed for a school to prison pipeline that was created by Presidents Nixon and Reagan when they declared war on recreational drugs like pot.
I’ve heard teachers get blamed for poverty. Teenage pregnancy. The spread of HIV and other STDs.
After 1983, at one parent conference night, I was blamed for losing his daughter’s homework that she never turned in. She was sitting beside him and I asked her if she had her English notebook. She did. I asked to see it, opened it, and found all the missing homework that she started but never finished or turned in. No apology from that parent. I thought he was going to come across the table and attack me for proving his daughter lied to him and that he was wrong. If he had, I might have killed him.
Another parent blamed me for being boring which was the reason his daughter was not earning a good grade in my class. I pointed out that other students in the same class were doing the work and earning good grades. If I was boring, that didn’t stop them from doing the work.
Another parent said I had no control over my class and her son couldn’t concentrate, until he said, “Mom, that wasn’t Mr. Lofthouse. His class is quiet as a church.”
One year when the rank and punish standardized test results for the previous year were published in the media, the high school where I taught didn’t improve its ranking. My students for the new year laughed at me and the other teachers, blaming us for that high school’s poor showing.
They said we were all failures.
I replied those grades weren’t mine. You earned that average score last year when you took that test.
How many of you don’t pay attention in class, do the class and homework needed to learn. I can look at the grades you are earning now and tell you who is going to do poorly on those tests at the end of the year and who will show improvement.
If you don’t pay attention, do the work, read and study, your end of the year test scores will show little or no growth.
I said, If we swapped all of the students with that high ranking high school in that richer district a few miles from here where few students live in poverty, and left all the teachers in place, do you think you’re going to automatically get the same scores those other students earned? They’d bring those scores with them, and next year this high school would get that higher ranking.
This blame public school teachers for whatever has been going on for 42 years, and I doubt if it will ever end.
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fyi https://carolkocivar.substack.com/p/send-a-reminder-to-congress https://carolkocivar.substack.com/p/send-a-reminder-to-congressSend a Reminder to Congress: https://carolkocivar.substack.com/p/send-a-reminder-to-congressWe should not have someone as our president who tried to overthrow the government. https://substack.com/profile/112949662-carol-kocivar CAROL KOCIVAR https://substack.com/@carolkocivarJAN 02, 202 https://carolkocivar.substack.com/https://open.substack.com/pub/carolkocivar/p/send-a-reminder-to-congress?r=1v8wim&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
>
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And, this, politician, FAILED to, realize, that his own political party is, ERASING, the, important FACTS of history (i.e. slavery, etc., etc., etc.) that it is, his political party, that’s, trying to, BRAIN WASH the, next generations, so they would not have the, critical thinking skills, required to, decide for themselves, it makes the, future generations, easier to lead, because, the, Republicans had, erased the, awful parts of history, to make it “sound” and, “look”, pretty. And, the next generations will, lead everyone to, HELL for sure!
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Walters is more a propagandist than governor. He represents a branch of the GOP that spreads lies to feed the fear of a public that blindly accepts extremists’ lies as truth. Lying has been been a winning strategy for conservatives. They spread the lies, repeat it multiple times, and their low information followers accept it as the “gospel.” Lying is part of the fascist playbook.
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He’s state superintendent, not governor. But you are right about the lying. Walters presents himself as a devout Christian, insisting that the 10 Commandments must be posted in every classroom and the Bible integrated into lessons. There’s no evidence that these “lessons” change behavior. None.
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Would some reporter in Oklahoma (or even a national reporter) please call him on this statement and PROVE it?
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As Bugs Bunny liked to say, What a maroon.
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What a disgusting statement and what a disgusting man. I am sorry for those in Oklahoma.
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This isn’t the first time. US Education Secretary Rod Paige called teachers terrorists in 2004. Labor educator Tom Juravich write a catchy song about it, “My Teacher is a Terrorist.” Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to dig it up.
https://schakowsky.house.gov/media/press-releases/schakowsky-calls-president-bush-immediately-fire-education-secretary-paige
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Also, Walters put together an extreme rightwing curriculum committee with people in Project 2025 in order to advance Christian Nationalism in schools.
One of its members “Steve Deace, a conservative radio host and author, said, ‘Wish we had more like my man here,’ when commenting on [Walters’] video.”
John
Ryan Walters attempts to connect teachers’ unions with New Orleans terror attack
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