Rick Green [00:00:07] It's the intersection of faith and culture. Thanks for joining us today on the WallBuilders Show. Rick Green here with David Barton and Tim Barton later in the program. Ryan Walters will be with us from, I started to say the great state of Oklahoma, but I just know David's going to say North Texas, so I'm just going to see it from the great State of North Texas, yes. No, it's going to be good to have Ryan on guys. 

David Barton [00:00:27] Yeah, Ryan's a great leader and what he has done in Oklahoma is really set a benchmark for other people to come to. He's had so much courage and conviction and he is a conservative, a con well, he was a Christian constitutional and conservative, in that order and he takes on his party when he needs to, and he's been a really strong leader up there. 

Tim Barton [00:00:46] Well, when you ruffle feathers for promoting the Bible, the number one literature book of all time, the most influential book in world history, but also certainly in American history, when you are promoting something like that and you're causing both sides to get upset with you, you're probably doing something right. And certainly he has. It's been, so we've talked about it many times on and off air on the program. We've had Ryan, I believe on the program before, we've met with him many times. He is somebody that we've been very impressed with. His courage, his drive, his motivation, and really his wisdom in a lot of what he has done. He has promoted what he believes to be right. And he was willing, Dad, as you mentioned, even to take on his own party at times when there were people that were not supportive of what to him made a lot sense. And by the way, what made a lotta sense to us too in the way he was doing it. So he's somebody that has been a great leader in Oklahoma, and is actually working to change a lot of the educational structure in Oklahoma, which Oklahoma is no exception to the rest of the nation, the whole nation needs to re-examine and adjust and change the way we've structured education, the way it's working. But to have a leader like Ryan, who's willing to engage it firsthand, and say we know we need to change it, let's go ahead and do it. To have that kind of leader is really impressive and fortunate for Oklahoma. 

Rick Green [00:02:08] Woffers who serves as the superintendent of education in Oklahoma with us when we return you're listening to the WallBuilders Show.

Rick Green [00:03:21] Welcome to The WallBuilders Show. Thanks for staying with us. And man, I'm telling you, if you haven't been watching Oklahoma and Ryan Walters and what he's doing in education there, it is the model for the country. Ryan joins us right now. Uh, Ryan, you're a busy man. You are revolutionizing education right there in the state of Oklahoma. And we're hoping people will listen today and push for the same thing to be done in their state. Thanks for some time today. 

Ryan Walters [00:03:43] Hey, look, Rick, I appreciate it. I'm obviously a huge fan of yours, you're a good friend. And, you know, we're trying all we can here in Oklahoma to take an education system that was run by teachers unions, radical leftists, bureaucracy, and turn it on its head and put it back in the charge of the parents, the parents where God gave kids to parents, not to government, not to bureaucracy, not the teachers unions. And so we have really upset the apple cart here in Oklahoma and look, I frankly think we've got a roadmap here for other states to follow. 

Rick Green [00:04:08] Well, let's start with the Bible curriculum because this one other states have noticed what you're doing there and even passed legislation in several states to go this direction. We've got, you know, efforts for time release and all that. But I mean, you've you said, look, this should be taught as a history book, as a literature book. There's no reason to not have the Bible in schools. Talk about that one for a little bit. 

Ryan Walters [00:04:28] You know, and thank you for that, and everything you just said is our position, and it shouldn't be controversial. And as a matter of fact, it wasn't controversial until we had a Supreme Court in the 1960s say, we want to take the Bible out of school, we're going to take prayer out of That was a radical position. So don't let the left gaslight all the conservatives out there to believing that somehow thinking that the most read book in American history, the most cited book in American History, the book that influenced not only government, obviously, but influenced our society. You can't hardly go. A few blocks without noticing the impact that the church, the Bible, has had in America and how absurd of a position we've allowed the leftist to take hold of, which is we should keep it out of school. I mean, how do you learn American history without the Bible? How do you learn about literature and what books influence society without the bible? And that's what I always told people, oh, you want to take the Bible off. Okay, so if the Bible the number one most influential, most read book in American history doesn't meet the standard of what kids should be reading out of and understanding. What book is going to meet that criteria? I mean, you just look at the absurdity of the position, but here's the reality. The left has done this intentionally because they don't want kids to know about the influence Christianity and the Bible had in American history. They want our kids to believe that every founding father is this radical atheist, a secularist, that hated religion. That's absurd, right? So what we're doing is putting the Bible back in every classroom, putting the bible back in our standards so that kids can understand the context, the role that it played. Throughout American history, because again, if we're gonna be this great country again, if we gonna continue to make America great again, we first have to understand what made America great in the first place. He had to study our history, and of course, it would be absolutely malfeasance to not include the Bible in American history. Man, I think you just can't. 

Rick Green [00:06:11] The best summary on that that I've heard. I mean, that's yeah, we got it. We got to get every state to do the exact same thing. What is the opposition? Where do they try to block you on this? Because I mean you have the authority to have this implemented in the school. So what are they trying to do to try to prevent you from doing that? 

Ryan Walters [00:06:28] Great question. So let me walk you through kind of the opposition of what you'll face. Number one, you know, they do this whole ads Christian nationalism. You're trying to force kids to be Christian. I go, guys, we're not forcing anyone, any religion on anyone. What we're doing is we're going back through American history. I once, I had a CNN host, Rick, and we got into it and she was like, well, I mean, I said, look, Thomas Jefferson said we're endowed by our creator with certain alienable rights. Do you not think it's important for kids to understand? What did he mean by that, number one? Number two, how would the public at large have understood it, right? Like Americans reading that, what would they have thought at the time? How do you not, how do you teach that without understanding the Great Awakening, how people viewed our creator, God, what was the beliefs of the time. And I had a, I mean, a host say, well, how did you know he wasn't talking about like a Hindu God? And I said to Rick and I was like, there is literally no one. In the 18th century that was like, you know, Jefferson might be talking about Vishnu, you know, from the Hindu religion. Like, no, everyone knew exactly what he was talking about, but that shows you how ahistorical they are. So number one, they try to push this. You're pushing religion or not. What we're doing is we're pushing an accurate view of American history so our kids can make decisions that will continue to make this a great country. And the second thing they've done is they've tried every way to tie this up in court. So I've been facing multiple lawsuits on this. There's still one before our state Supreme Court. We just want a lawsuit on the standards process. Again, we had the teachers union. I mean, they sued us every step of the way and we feel very confident on every lawsuit. But you know what happens with these lawsuits, you see with President Trump, it's lawfare. What they want to do is they want to tie you up in court. They want to waste a ton of money. They want to slow everything down to a crawl. And they hope to find one liberal judge who says, actually, we will stop this from being implemented. Actually, we will rule with these radicals. And right now, you know, we've been very successful. We've been able to move forward. But that's really kind of the stage that we have entered into is a lot of the legal aspect of it. 

Rick Green [00:08:20] Okay, Ryan, I wanna ask you about a specific one that's happening right now. You are even giving instruction to the schools on how to deal with the Israeli-Iran conflict. This is interesting to me, the fact that you're able to deploy that quickly, real-time information to help with the education system, to prevent the woke stuff from coming in, but also just to help teachers deal with the hot topics so that students aren't seeing school as this sterile, you know, it's all old stuff. But it's actually education's real and it's real time. I love this, this is a totally new approach. What caused you to do that? 

Ryan Walters [00:08:53] Well, number one, Rick, thank you for that. And, you know, I'm a history teacher. That's what I did for 10 years before stepping into this role. And, one of the things I always thought is, how do you expect kids to understand history and understand that it actually historical knowledge actually helps them develop ideas about visions for the future, things like that. If you avoid any of the touchy subjects, like you've got to be able to dive in here and you got to able to be driven by facts. Now, I will tell you. The leftists are all about that. You know, they want to dive in and they want to tell you that Israelis are terrorists and that they stole the land and all this type of nonsense. So what we came in as we said is, listen, we are going to actually have very specific facts and the standards that says, listen when you teach about these conflicts you're going to teach them in their historical context. You're going teach them with historical relevancy and you're gonna stick to the facts. We're not gonna allow some teacher's union left-wing activists to walk in the classroom and tell somebody and sound like AOC or something. They're not gonna walk into a classroom and push that ideology on kids. And unfortunately, we've seen the rampant anti-Semitism in higher ed. So we know teachers may be coming to our state, they may be in the classroom, leaving Harvard or leaving some school that taught them that the Jews are terrible, that Jews, this anti-semitism. So we are gonna make sure that they have the resources, the training and the direct guidance of how you will cover this subject. And we wanted that to be crystal clear so we were able to deploy this. We have sent the memo out to the districts as well. Good positive feedback. And look, the teachers unions don't like this because they want to propagate to kids. They want to lie to kids, they want convince kids America and Israel are terrible places. We're the bad guys. We're not gonna allow it here in Oklahoma and frankly every state should be doing this. You've got to protect our kids against this woke ideology. You're seeing it, you're hearing it, you're watching the teachers union. You know, marching with the no kings protest or watching them make all these comments against Israel, against any of our allies. We've got to stand firm and make sure the classroom isn't turning into a left-wing indoctrination mill. 

Rick Green [00:10:51] Bro, that is exactly the opposite of what I too often see. I mean, even here where I'm living now in Fredericksburg, Texas, we had a teacher that just simply showed the inauguration. I mean she's literally just like you're saying real time. This is what's going on in the world and got completely reprimanded for it as, as if by highlighting who's actually in office somehow, you know, she was wrong for sharing that with the kids, so you're, you're doing the exact opposite of what the left wants done. How hard is it for you right now, as you look at the landscape of education in your state, this is somewhat off topic of what we planned for today, but you gotta be thinking about it. How hard it is to find teachers that aren't woke and educators and superintendents? Like, what are we doing to get back upstream and start providing a better teacher workforce that's not been indoctrinated by these leftists? 

Ryan Walters [00:11:42] Rick, I think that's a very important question. And I wanna tell you how we've tackled it and how we solved it here. The first thing we did is we wanted to send a clear message to everyone, the teachers unions aren't in control anymore, parents are, and we want great teachers. That's what we want. We want teachers, we're not gonna allow indoctrination both from the teachers and your bosses. Your administrators are not gonna force you to teach CRT like we had a district here. Your administrators, they're not going to force you to teach gender dysphoria like we uncovered. We're not to allow that. You're gonna be able to teach math. Hey, not all the other nonsense. And by the way, if you do all the other nonsense, we're going to remove you from the classroom. So we send a very clear message to every teacher in the state and every teacher who's thinking about teaching. This is what it's going to look like in Oklahoma. So that was huge. We had a lot of teachers that signed up who wanted to come in and teach because they saw what that vision was, number one. Number two, we also brought discipline back to the classroom and we said, listen. We're not gonna do this like liberal, woke nonsense of everybody's a victim. It doesn't matter if they cuss you out or throw a stapler at you, Miss Susie, you know. It's really, you they're having a hard day, so just take it. No, no, no. We said if they're unruly kids and they're disrupting the classroom, get them out. Okay, we are gonna allow discipline back in the classroom because kids should be able to learn. Boy, that got a lot of excitement around, especially your old school teachers, your traditional value, your conservative teachers. Yeah. 

Rick Green [00:12:59] Made them want to come back right I mean cuz so many so many of them left because of this crazy idea we're gonna let a kid even us we we we were letting kids assault teachers and then put them back into that same classroom with that teacher across this country. 

Ryan Walters [00:13:13] Like the first email I got from Joe Biden was he was worried about how many kids we were disciplining in our schools and he thought it was too. And I was just like, I sent him an email back and was basically like pound sand. Like, what are you talking about? We're going to have discipline in the classroom. Like what a weird, you know, but they're just obsessed with that, right? They just have this woke worldview that doesn't allow them to see reality. Listen, so we told our teachers, and by the way, if your administrators don't support you, we have, we passed a teacher's bill of rights. And we said, you email me and you tell me, we'll investigate it. Your principals have to have your back. You're there to teach. They need to be helping create a culture of discipline. And again, I'll say this, Rick, you look at society today, you look how many young people going, burn down buildings, throw Molotov cocktails when they're upset about something. Hey, look, I think that starts from when you're four and five years old, you're in a classroom where they go, hey, you not really responsible, you cussed me out today, you hit me today. That's baloney, we've got to drive that point home. If no, actually you're responsible for your own behavior. We've done it here in Oklahoma. Then the third thing we did, Rick. Is we also said, hey, we're unapologetic. We want merit pay for teachers. We pay teachers on merit pay here. If you're great, hey look, I'll pay you six figures. Hey, if you're one of the best science teachers in the state, I want you to make more money. And you know what, if your not doing as good a job, I don't want you make as much money. So what that has done too is we've been able to partner merit pay and signing bonuses for the top 1% of teachers in the country to say, come to Oklahoma, we will recognize it, we will put you in the ability to teach well with the discipline and the anti-woke standards we have in place. But also, like- You do a great job, we wanna pay you more. This is gonna be based on merit. And because of all that, we've had record levels of teacher recruitment. We've recruited hundreds of teachers every year through these specific programs. And they've come in and just been rock stars. 

Rick Green [00:14:52] That is, I've said for 30 years, man, we treat these teachers like assembly line workers, and the best teacher gets paid the same as the worst teacher because of the teacher unions, That's how they negotiate these contracts. The fact that you've been able to disrupt that, I mean, that's incredible. I didn't even know that you had done that. I was just curious about that topic. And I'm sorry for sidetracking us there, because I know we had a lot of other things we were going to get to. At least, can I ask you about the This charter school that's doing, it's a religious charter school, people are trying to stop that. What's the status of that and why are people against it? 

Ryan Walters [00:15:27] Well, unfortunately, they have stopped it momentarily. The US Supreme Court gave us a four-four ruling, which means it goes down to the previous decision. Amy Coney Barrett recused herself, which we were really disappointed in, but that left us with a four, four tie. So right now the school is not open. It's really unfortunate. And look, just to be frank, it's really fortunate our own attorney general in the state was the one fighting us in court. So our own Republican attorney general, Gittner Drummond, sided with the Satanists, the atheists, the teachers unions, against the Catholic church, against the Christian parents against the parents across the state who said, hey, look, this sounds like a great option to me. We know that this Catholic schools have been very successful in the past, so we want to check out this opportunity. So that's where we are. Now, look we're not giving up. There's several options that we're going to continue to pursue. We hope to get a court case back up. We hope to, you know, rejuvenate this. But we are going to continuing to fight here in Oklahoma for our education system to number one, have school choice, and number two, to protect your religious liberty. We're not going to tell a school you can't open because Your founders are Catholic because they are Christian. That's ultimately what happened here The court said they met every criteria. There was no issue with their application There's no issue. With what they want to teach. They meet every every iota of the law but Because they are catholic. We're not going to let them. I thought that that's absurd to me. That' 

Rick Green [00:16:43] I mean, that sounds like complete discrimination to me. I mean complete religious discrimination. 

Ryan Walters [00:16:47] Kavanaugh said in the hearing, he said that there's no other way to explain it other than blatant discrimination. There's no explanation. You're not even claiming it was for something else or technically. No, no, no. They are saying because you met every bit of the criteria, but because you're Catholic, you can't do it. So I think- How'd they get forwarded? Did Roberts go with them, of course? So unfortunately, I can speculate, but they won't release it because it was- 

Rick Green [00:17:10] Oh, they don't, they haven't even said who the four four is. Wow, man. Oh, bro, I, we got to do this again. And, and, uh, and just thank you so, so much of what you're doing. And by the way, I'm glad you made it to mentioned as a Republican attorney general that you had to fight because Tim and David, of course, they've been going around and testifying and state state after state after state on the take commandments and the Bible and curriculum and schools and all that, and they keep coming back going. The Republicans are our problem. It's not that, you know, we're fighting these moderate Republicans that have a total misunderstanding of separation, church and state, total misunderstanding of the history of education in the Bible and schools and in our country. Thank you for standing up against that, even when it's people in your own party. And, uh, we just wish you the best, man. We're praying for you to continue to have success and set the example. And we're hoping we're going to export a lot, a lot of what you're doing to other states across the country. 

Ryan Walters [00:17:57] Thank you for that, Rick. And I will say this, and there's nobody who understands this better than you and has pushed this more than you. But I'm gonna tell you right now, my biggest problem here in the state are not these radical leftists. Listen, they come here, they threaten, they disrupt. It is the Republican. We have a Republican super majority here. There is no reason we shouldn't be able to, I mean, eliminate. Income taxes, eliminate property taxes. There's no reason we shouldn't be able to go back and protect our God-given rights. There's not reason we should be able to put the Bible back in the classroom. There's now reason we couldn't be able to do all the things we talked about today. But I'm gonna tell you right now, it has been an absolute dog fight to get every single one of these across the finish line because Republicans won't stand up, because Republicans sell out to an establishment, they sell out a special interest lobby rather than fight for their constituents, rather than for patriots, rather than to fight for the ideals America was founded on. And that's where I'm so thankful for President Trump. I'm still thankful for you. I'm thankful for the Bartons to continue that fight, to expose those Republicans that are not standing up for those values and to continue to hold their feet to the fire because folks, we got to get better elected officials in. They're going to go out and fight for you and that's key here. So again, my biggest problem with the Democrats and the unions, they cause huge stings here. They sue me all the time. Again, they're wild. They're crazy, right? But ultimately, if the Republicans just had some backbone, we could steamroll them, get these, and again just to be clear why do we want to steamroll them because our policies work for everyone you put conservative policies in place everybody everybody benefits from them and that's the truly ironic thing is you know I sometimes I gotta i gotta left this in here arguing with me i'm like you know so I actually want your taxes cut too do you understand that I actually what your freedom protected, I mean like you actually all these things you are just fighting me on them they actually benefit you too You're just not wanting to see it because you're so woke. Your ideology is so crazed, but Rick, I appreciate you. I love all the work you're doing. You're absolutely key to the foundation of bringing this country back on track. And so I can't say how much I appreciate you and your work. 

Rick Green [00:20:00] Well, right back at you, man. And you're living exactly, my dad told me this when I first got elected to the legislature, you know, 25, whatever years ago. And he said, Hey, you, you the Democrats are going to be against it. The problem is going to your fellow Republicans that,  that are not on board with actually getting these good things done, but I really think Ryan, I think the appetite of the public has changed, right? I think we have this window of opportunity. They want exactly what you just described. They want that bold leadership. Taking ground back, really getting these positive. I mean, everything you've talked about is just common sense American values. And it lines up with the laws of nature and nature's God. And when you do it right, you do it this way, like you said, everybody benefits. They can be atheists, they can be leftist, whatever. They're going to benefit. Their kid's going to get a better education. Their community is going to be safer. I mean all those things. It's good for everybody. And we're doing this new Rebuilding Liberty course where we're saying challenge the status quo. Work on altering or abolishing, as Jefferson said, and let's get our government back to where it should be, and you're leading the way in Oklahoma. So, bro, let's do it again soon. 

Ryan Walters [00:21:01] I would love to. Thank you for having me, Rick. 

Rick Green [00:21:03] That's Ryan Walters from Oklahoma. Stay with us, folks. We'll be right back with David and Tim Barton. Welcome back to the WallBuilders Show. And I just, wow, guys, wow. I mean, this is, I remember my frustration as a legislator all those years ago. And I know how people get really frustrated with all the red tape and all. We'd love to do that, but we just can't get it done. And all the excuses we typically hear. And here's a guy that's just cutting through all of that. And within his jurisdiction, within the power of what he gets to do as superintendent of education, he's getting it done guys. 

Tim Barton [00:22:39] He really is. It reminds me a little bit of when I think y'all helped me remember. I think it was when Biden and Trump were having the debate. No, it wasn't. I guess it was Trump's inauguration. I was trying to think of when Biden said, to fix the immigration problem, we need Congress to pass more laws. And then Trump, it says, it turns out all you need was a new president. I feel like that's what Ryan is doing to some extent with some of these educational problems where people look and go, man, we have all these problems and what are we going to do? And he says, let's just be a leader. And let's Let's make it happen. Let's figure out how we can do this and let's move forward. And in the midst of that, I also, I would encourage everybody listening, go back and re-listen to the beginning of the interview, go back, and maybe memorize, learn what he said. It was one of the best explanations and apologetics for the practical application of why the Bible should be included in curriculum, why it should be in public schools. It should be a textbook we study because of how influential and significant the Bible was obviously in the world, but certainly to America and the way he laid that out was absolutely brilliant. 

David Barton [00:23:49] You know, I was at a church this weekend talking to some educators afterwards, and they were talking about, well, how do you get the Bible back in as a secularist? Go to Dawkins. The number one atheist in the world today thinks you have an absolutely bad education if you don't educate on the Bible. And he's an atheist. He doesn't like the Bible, he doesn't agree with the Senate, but it's the best literature book. It's the Best History book. I mean, he just goes to, he's written a book on how important the Bible is to education, and that's from an atheist! And so what Ryan laid out was such a good explanation. And I think it's really significant. As he said, you can't make America great again, if you don't know it made it great in the first place. And that's what he's really pointing out and laying out. And he's exactly right too, about lawfare. I mean, we're watching it with president Trump. Trump's got 130 lawsuits now, everything he does getting sued somewhere. And it's kind of the same way with Ryan and Oklahoma. He does all this stuff that he's authorized to do as superintendent education. But then to get all these lawsuits brought, and it's like, wait a minute, did we elect the judges to be the superintendent of education? Did we elect a superintendent of the education of Oklahoma? And so it really is law fair is where they've headed. And that's what you do when you can't win with the people and you can win with, with the right ideas. But as he pointed out. 

Tim Barton [00:25:03] They have a super majority in the House, in the Senate, in Oklahoma. And the fact that he is not able to get more done, because as he pointed out that there's not enough people exhibiting the backbone, the courage and the leadership in these moments. It's not only the lawfare he's dealing with, he's dealing with his own party, not supporting what should be a very basic common sense thought. 

David Barton [00:25:27] Yeah, I love what he's said too about having a teacher's bill of rights. I mean, that would be so empowering to teachers to say, here's the rights you have as a teacher. And these are things they already think they already do have. They just don't know they have it. And they've been intimidated by teachers unions or whatever, but he's got so much courage and boldness and he's so well grounded and just so many good ideas that, that every state needs to tape and adopt what Ryan's doing in Oklahoma. 

Rick Green [00:25:53] I was thinking to him when he was, uh, when he was laying out some of that out and talking about some of the, in his own party, people that object about how many times y'all come back from a state testifying on a good bill, you know, whether it's take of ambassador, you know, Bible or whatever it is. And, and you're saying it's not, it's not the Democrats. It's the Republicans. It's these guys that actually have, you know, bought the lies of the last 20, 30 years and aren't willing to take these bold steps. And it's starting to change. We're starting to see some, some cracks in that and, we're getting people the truth. And then they're, they act different once they get the truth, so let's make sure that we're continuing to get this done all over the country. Oklahoma, of course, helping lead the way on so many of these things. Thanks to Ryan Walters and then so many states that did some good legislation this last go around. You know, we got a lot of work to do folks, but there's some really good news out there. I hope y'all enjoy this program and hearing about the good news in Oklahoma. Thanks so much for listening today. You've been listening to theWallBuilders Show.