In Ryan Walters’ Oklahoma school system, it’s honor Charlie Kirk — or else | Opinion
In my occasional series I think of as “Don’t let this happen to us,” I laughed out loud when I saw this statement in a tweet by Ryan Walters, Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction: “… teachers will not be teaching in Oklahoma classrooms.”
Freudian slip there, Ryan? Or maybe he’s finally hit on the reason why Oklahoma has the 48th best schools out of 50 states.
OK, before I have too much fun with this, I need to acknowledge that the “teachers will not be teaching” comment was part of a larger tweet, so I don’t get accused of taking things out of context.
The full tweet read: “It has been one week since Charlie Kirk’s horrific political assassination. 70 teachers + 12 districts have been identified for vile rhetoric & refusing to honor his memory. Districts will be held accountable and teachers will not be teaching in Oklahoma classrooms.”
Funny how the added context makes this even worse. More about that in a bit.
It’s been a minute since we’ve checked in on Walters, chief of the alleged school system of Baja Kansas.
Last time, it was when he tried to ban reporters from attending public meetings of the state Board of Education.
The time before that was when he ordered schools to have a Donald Trump Bible in every classroom and teach from it, and tried to force everybody to watch a cringey video of himself praying for Trump.
The time before that was when he had his henchmen run a KGB-level sting operation to ferret out Department of Education employees who talked out of school about Walters’ plans to gut Oklahoma’s education system from the inside out.
And now Walters’ obsession with capitalizing politically on the assassination of Charlie Kirk has taken him off the deep end.
Last week, he decreed that approximately 750,000 teachers and students would drop what they’re doing and observe a moment of silence at noon, Sept. 16, honoring Kirk, who was murdered by a lone gunman on Sept. 10.
Never mind the absurdity of trying to quiet a cafeteria full of elementary schoolchildren at lunchtime to stand in silent mourning of someone they’ve never heard of.
The so-called Department of Education monitored compliance by way of a snitch line on its website called “Awareity.”
“Over the past week, we have received a total of 224 reports through our Awareity software on defamatory comments, 30 Awareity reports on not observing a moment of silence and 3 reports on schools who refused to fly their flag at half staff,” Walters said in a press release. “Our OSDE teams have investigated each report and identified 70 certified teachers, from 44 districts, who have made statements regarding Charlie Kirk’s murder and 12 school districts who did not participate in a moment of silence.”
The statement continued that teachers who made statements about Kirk that upset Walters will be fired and districts that failed to comply with his forced mourning order are “currently under investigation,” whatever that means.
Since then, Walters has ordered that every high school in Oklahoma will have to organize a chapter of Turning Point USA, the organization founded by Kirk to advance Christian conservative ideology in public schools and college campuses.
Walters’ closed out his press release with a statement that was even more laughable than “teachers will not be teaching in Oklahoma classrooms.”
He wrote: “In Oklahoma, we will continue to put students before political indoctrination agendas.”
Can’t you can’t see the hypocrisy and irony in that statement?
This story was originally published September 24, 2025 at 4:53 AM.
