Freedom to Read? Part One: The Crusade Against 'Woke Indoctrination'

Editor’s note: This article is the first in a series about the erosion of intellectual freedom in Oklahoma’s public-school libraries. Since taking office, State Superintendent Ryan Walters has called on lawmakers to remove books from school libraries, instituted book-banning rules, shunned the American Library Association, and recommended deregulating over 200 districts from state library staffing standards. These developments could have far-reaching implications on KPG's policy work.

January 3, 2024 

During a March 17, 2023, public hearing about proposed Oklahoma State Department of Education administrative rules that would ban “pornographic materials and sexualized content” from the state’s public-school libraries, Sherri Brown stepped to the podium to argue against the idea.

“No one wants truly pornographic content in our libraries. However, what one person might consider inappropriate or sexualized content might not be considered that by another person,” said Brown, legislative chair of the Oklahoma Parent Legislative Action Committee, a statewide network of local education advocacy groups. “The weaponization of the department through the rulemaking process is unacceptable and quite frankly, un-American. It is how authoritarian and dictatorial governments work but not how a representative democracy works.”

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters’ crusade against intellectual freedom in Oklahoma public schools is motivated by what he calls “woke indoctrination.” It’s a phrase that has gained popularity among aspiring right-wing political hopefuls. Around the same time last spring, former President Donald Trump said, if reelected, he would cut funding to schools that supported Critical Race Theory or any “inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content,” according to The Hill. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, another presidential candidate, and South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, rumored to be a choice for Trump’s running mate, have also spoken out against “anti-American” public education.

Walters’ solution—rather than encouraging critical thought and debate in a marketplace of ideas—appears to be the censorship of ideas, speech, and media that do not fall in line with his philosophy of public education.

After Brown left the podium at that March 2023 OSDE meeting, Janice Danforth followed. Chair of the Tulsa County chapter of Moms for Liberty—a conservative political organization that lobbies against teaching about systemic racism, LGBTQ+ people or themes, values of diversity, equity, and inclusion, and the theory of social-emotional learning, which encourages social and emotional skills within school curricula—Danforth applauded Walters for proposing these new rules. She spoke about “doing what is right and maintaining a moral code for our youth.”

“These rule changes are necessary because school districts have chosen to ignore our current law. Pornography is written to elicit sexual arousal, and that’s what a lot of these books are doing,” Danforth said. “These minds that we are giving these books to are vulnerable, and, as adults responsible for what material is available to them, I completely support a district losing its accreditation status should it choose to provide obscene and pornographic materials to our children.”

The rules allow parents and guardians to file written complaints with OSDE about objectionable books found in school libraries, bypassing the alleged offending school’s administration. There is an online portal, Awareity, to handle such grievances. A complaint triggers an OSDE investigation, and districts found to be noncompliant could face downgraded accreditation status.

The Oklahoma State Board of Education approved the administrative rules on March 23, 2023. After the Legislature deferred, Governor Kevin Stitt accepted them on June 23, and they went into effect on September 11.

Under the new rules, districts are required annually to provide OSDE with a list of all books and the media available in its libraries. “It is not the role of the superintendent or this board to write legislation or issue an executive order, yet that is exactly what these proposals pertaining to the library media programs do,” said Brown during the March 2023 public hearing. “These rules circumvent the legislative process, far exceeding the authority of the superintendent and this board.”

Attorney General Gentner Drummond weighed in on April 4, at the request of Representative Mark McBride, who questioned whether the OSDE had the legal power to make such rules outside the scope of the Legislature. “An agency may only exercise the powers ‘expressly given by statute,’” Drummond wrote in response to McBride’s request for an opinion. “An agency cannot expand those powers by its own authority.”

Yet the rules remain in effect. Regardless of whether OSDE had the authority to promulgate the rules, the question remains: are Oklahoma public schools shelving pornographic books in its libraries? Part Two of this series will illustrate a call by Walters to remove certain books from school libraries.