As Louisiana just became the fifth status to support academic materials produced by Prager University, a privately funded endeavor to employ denied videos to teach liberal values in public schools is gaining grip.
PragerU is a nonprofit that produces small clips that, among other topics, promote nationalism and liberal views of history, race, gender, and sex. Since last year, Florida, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Montana and Arizona have also announced collaborations with PragerU under which the nonprofit’s training be state- sanctioned, additional training materials for public schools. According to the nonprofit and state officials, PragerU is neither paying nor receiving money from state partners.
The organization and its supporters accuse the actions of refuting what they refer to as left-leaning theories in education. The half dozen partner states, said PragerU Chief Executive Marissa Streit, are just the beginning.
” We are pursuing every state in America”, she said.
Opponents say materials produced by PragerU amount to right- wing indoctrination.
” Prager U’s materials are hyperpartisan to the point of propaganda, inaccurate and incredibly substandard”, said Marisol Garcia, president of the Arizona Education Association, a statewide teachers group. In January, Arizona announced a PragerU partnership.
The conservative talk show host Dennis Prager and screenwriter Allen Estrin founded PragerU in 2009 and expanded its offerings to include younger students. Its website says its goal is to counter” the dominant left- wing ideology in culture, media, and education” by promoting” American values”. A cartoon-style retelling of the biblical story of David and Goliath, which instructs children,” when God is on your side, you have nothing to fear,” and is one of the most popular videos on the” Prager U Kids” YouTube channel.
Some of Prager U’s videos have received criticism for inaccurate facts, especially a fictionalized animated clip that depicts famous abolitionist Frederick Douglass defending the country’s founding fathers ‘ support for slavery.
Streit disputes that Prager U’s materials are inaccurate. She claimed that the nonprofit is bringing a patriotic perspective to public schools across the country.
According to Streit,” American students are basically given a very one-sided perspective of American history and civics.” ” We do n’t teach that America is perfect. However, we are taught that America is the most successful experiment on Earth.
Teachers are not being required to deploy the materials, according to PragerU supporters. They claim that the introduction of PragerU to public school classrooms is a much-needed course correction after years of institutions that adopted implicitly or explicitly left-leaning lessons based on sources like the New York Times ‘ 1619 Project, which places slavery at the center of the country’s founding.
In Oklahoma, which debuted a PragerU partnership in September, state Superintendent Ryan Walters framed the need for the nonprofit’s videos in overtly political terms. In an emailed statement, Walters wrote,” There is no better example of a curriculum that rips the soul out of the liberal takeover of our schools.”
In Louisiana, which approved the PragerU materials last month, Superintendent Cade Brumley said the nonprofit’s videos represent an important optional addition to the state’s new” Freedom Framework” social studies standards.
The standards, adopted in 2022, are “based in American exceptionalism and our ongoing quest for a more perfect union”, Brumley said in a statement. The PragerU videos” could be very helpful,” he said, and students should understand and appreciate their role in sustaining and improving our constitutional republic.
The PragerU partnerships are just one of the most recent attempts by state officials to influence what hot-button subjects are taught in school districts. A Washington Post analysis revealed that many conservatives began complaining that instruction was left-leaning after the coronavirus pandemic caused widespread remote learning. This led to more than 70 laws limiting what teachers can say about race, racism, history, sexual orientation, and gender identity.
Prager U’s reach and funding exploded alongside these political battles over education.
According to a Post tally, the nonprofit currently has more than 11.3 million followers on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and X. Prager U’s website says it draws 5 million views each day. Its revenue catapulted from$ 36 million in 2020 to$ 68.7 million in 2023, tax records show.
Streit, the CEO, said the nonprofit is funded by about 350, 000 donors from a variety of backgrounds” who give a wide range of amounts”. According to the Guardian and SourceWatch, she declined to name or confirm donors, but other notable donors include the conservative Bradley Foundation, the National Christian Foundation, and Texas-based fracking billionaires Farris and Dan Wilks. org.
How frequently will PragerU materials be used is unknown. Education officials contacted by The Post in states that have begun collaborations with PragerU either did not respond to inquiries or claimed they are not tracking how many school districts have used PragerU content. No one will be able to track how many educators show the videos, so it’s likely that the decision to use PragerU materials will depend on the opinions of each teacher.
” My guess is it will be a lot of political sound and fury, signifying very little educationally”, said Jonathan Zimmerman, a University of Pennsylvania professor who studies the history of education.
The Louisiana Education Department’s spokesman stated that” supplemental resources and curriculum are local decisions,” noting that the department does not collect information from school districts regarding the types of supplemental materials they use.
Education association leaders in Montana and Arizona said it would be difficult to determine whether any school districts formally chose to use PragerU materials because their states had established partnerships with the nonprofit.
” We have over 400 school districts in Montana— each with their own school board and administration”, said Rob Watson, executive director of the School Administrators of Montana. There might be at least one of those districts that have adopted PragerU, but I do not know of any others who have.
At least five school districts in Florida, which reportedly instructed their staffs not to use the videos, reportedly issued an instruction to them about this almost a year ago when the state became the first to work with PragerU. The Florida districts frequently cited laws that mandate that all supplemental materials must first be approved by local school officials. At least eight other school districts in Oklahoma have also rejected PragerU materials for the same reason.
Allegations of inaccuracies
The topics covered in PragerU lessons range from “government-run health care” to” the United States Constitution” to how to open and maintain a savings account. State officials approved a PragerU online financial literacy course for use in public schools as part of the PragerU partnership with New Hampshire, which was launched in September.
Teachers can use the nonprofit’s online resources for free and are accessible to the public through YouTube and its website. Online access to Streit’s books and workbooks is also free, though some magazines and workbooks, according to Streit, must be purchased in hard copies.
Additionally, PragerU publishes free guides to help educators determine the best way to use its content. In Louisiana, for instance, PragerU created a nearly 100- page document, available online, that matches its videos to state standards.
PragerU lessons, according to critics, defy the context of history and facts in order to support a conservative worldview. Some scientists claim that PragerU videos lack context and portray climate change as being alarmist, while the Council on American-Islamic Relations claims that some videos are anti-Muslim. Other complaints center on the nonprofit’s portrayal of slavery. Numerous historical figures make claims in numerous PragerU videos about the subject that people in the 21st century should not interpret historical events in light of contemporary values.
For instance, Christopher Columbus speaks with two young children from the twenty-first century in an animated video. Defending the practice of slavery, he says” slavery is as old as time” and asks:” How can you come here to the 15th century and judge me by your standards? … You must ask yourself,’ What did the culture and society at the time treat as no big deal?'”
The video is just one of several videos where speakers discuss slavery as a common practice in the period. In contrast to how other White people were attempting to keep slavery, Pandora U videos emphasize that White people worked to end it.
An animated version of the renowned abolitionist claims the nation’s Founding Fathers forged agreements on slavery because they were attempting to unify the country in the video featuring Douglass. Some Founding Fathers claim to be aware of slavery’s “vile and wrong” nature but place a premium on reconciliation and unification of the colonies. However, Douglass was better known for his steadfast opposition to agreements on slavery in the 1840s and 1950s, when the video is set, and the video conflates events from very different eras, according to experts.
” There’s a constant effort to spin atrocities in the past as not so bad”, said Kevin Kruse, a history professor at Princeton University, who has examined many of the company’s videos.
When Adrienne McCarthy, a researcher at Kansas State University, published an analysis of Prager U’s college- level materials in 2022, she found prominent themes included small government, opposition to the welfare state and pushback against movements such as Black Lives Matter. In her opinion, PragerU “mimics much of the extreme right-wing ideology in a way that is more digestible.”
No one can reasonably argue that PragerU denies the horrors of slavery, according to Streit, when asked about criticism of Prager U’s offerings, including the Douglass video.
The nonprofit is generally acting as a counterbalance and offering a point of view that is unheard of in school, according to Streit.
” Is n’t that what America is about”? she said. We do n’t mean to say that everyone should only use PragerU.
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