Pur­suant to ef­forts of the Sikh Coali­tion, the Ok­la­homa State Board of Ed­u­ca­tion has re­cently voted to ap­prove new so­cial stud­ies stan­dards, which, for the first time ever, will in­clude Sikhism.

With the ex­press ob­jec­tive of in­creas­ing Sikh aware­ness among fel­low Amer­i­cans and with the tar­geted multi-year cam­paign to en­sure that every pub­lic school stu­dent in the United States has a chance to learn about Sikhism, nearly 700,000 stu­dents in Ok­la­homa will get the op­por­tu­nity to ac­cu­rately learn about Sikhs and Sikhism.

“Ok­la­homa be­comes the 9th in a grow­ing list of states – in­clud­ing Ari­zona, New York, New Jer­sey, Texas, Cal­i­for­nia, Ten­nessee, Idaho and Col­orado – that have worked with the Sikh Coali­tion to in­clude ac­cu­rate in­for­ma­tion about Sikhs in their pub­lic school so­cial stud­ies stan­dards. These ef­forts are now pos­i­tively ed­u­cat­ing over 15 mil­lion pub­lic school stu­dents,” in­formed Prit­pal Kaur of the Sikh Coali­tion.

“Our fam­ily has lived in Ok­la­homa for many years, and our youngest son is still study­ing in the pub­lic school sys­tem. These new stan­dards will go a long way in en­sur­ing all Sikh chil­dren feel rep­re­sented and in­cluded in the class­room,” said Sikh com­mu­nity mem­ber Gur­cha­ran Singh. “I am grate­ful the Sikh Coali­tion worked to en­sure Sikhism is in­te­grated into Ok­la­homa’s re­vised stan­dards.”

Fol­low­ing the ini­tial re­quest in No­vem­ber 2018, the up­date to Ok­la­homa’s so­cial stud­ies stan­dards re­sulted from months of ad­vo­cacy be­hind the scenes by the Sikh Coali­tion.

The new, more in­clu­sive stan­dards will start to be im­ple­mented dur­ing the 2019-2020 school year. Re­view of in­struc­tional ma­te­ri­als, de­vel­op­ment of cur­ricu­lum frame­works and pro­vi­sion of pro­fes­sional de­vel­op­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties for teach­ers will oc­cur dur­ing this time. The Sikh Coali­tion hopes that full im­ple­men­ta­tion will hap­pen by 2020-2021 school year.

Prit­pal Kaur, the Sikh Coali­tion Ed­u­ca­tion Di­rec­tor has said that “The ac­cu­rate in­clu­sion of Sikhism in more state stan­dards across Amer­ica is part of the Sikh Coali­tion’s ef­forts to en­sure that all chil­dren feel rep­re­sented, in­cluded and safe when they go to school,”