Oklahoma Has EXCELLENT Social Studies Standards - Too Bad There's No Reason To Follow Them

This year, Senator Nathan Dahm has authored a bill - SB503 - to mandate that public schools in Oklahoma teach the following:

a. the content of the United States naturalization test, with an emphasis on the specific content of the test and the ideas and concepts it references. The United States naturalization test shall be made available in physical and electronic online formats as an optional assessment tool for teachers,

b. the Declaration of Independence,

c. the United States Constitution including the Bill of Rights,

d. substantive selections from the Federalist Papers,

e. the Emancipation Proclamation,

f. the Articles of Confederation,

g. the Gettysburg Address, and

h. George Washington’s Farewell Address

Critical Race Theory is the Next Common Core For Oklahoma Students - But Much Worse

Critical Race Theory. What's that about and how could it be worse than Common Core for Oklahoma's students?

Good questions! 

Let's start with the first:

Critical Race Theory is an ideal developed from Marxist theory that essentially asks human beings to see the world through a lens that sees people as either oppressed or oppressors based on their race and identity. This gets even more complicated when attempting to determine how oppressed one is - a factor determined by something called intersectionality. For example, if we are comparing three individuals - a black woman, a white man and a gay, black woman - the gay black woman is the most oppressed and the white man is the most oppressive.