Florida has added the conservative media platform PragerU to its K-12 curriculum, and Texas could be next as a national parental rights struggle rages ahead of 2024 elections.
Talk show host Dennis Prager founded PragerU, which is not a university, in 2009. The PragerU Kids lesson plans, billed as alternatives to “woke agendas” in public schools, feature short videos on figures such as former President Abraham Lincoln and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
Last week, PragerU announced that it had registered with the Texas comptroller’s office as a vendor. That paved the way for the State Board of Education to review its history and civics lessons for inclusion on a list of “open educational resources.”
The Florida Department of Education greenlighted the PragerU lessons last month as optional “supplemental teaching materials” for school districts.
“Under [a] new statute, the State Board of Education has ultimate approval on [open educational] resources once they are ready for full release,” the Texas Education Agency said in an email, noting that PragerU had not yet submitted materials for review.
“As advocates of education choice, we believe that it is up to the local schools to select from the variety of the supplementary education content we create,” Marissa Streit, PragerU CEO, told The Washington Times.
The conservative-leaning states have enacted restrictions on public school materials with “divisive concepts.”
School choice advocates have produced and promoted K-12 resources in recent years as “unbiased” alternatives to increasingly left-leaning lessons on racism, capitalism, transgender identity and other hot-button topics.
“The bottom line is this is an alternative and parents are screaming for alternatives,” Sheri Few, president of U.S. Parents Involved in Education, told The Washington Times. “Parents don’t want critical Marxist theories, overt sexualization and anti-American propaganda taught in government schools.”
Critics say PragerU videos whitewash racism, feed anti-immigrant bias and spread unscientific doubts about climate change.
Some educators say the videos don’t belong anywhere near a classroom.
“It’s a disgrace,” Andrew Crook, press secretary for the American Federation of Teachers, said in an email.
Others say they will wait to see which PragerU materials appear on campuses before forming opinions.
“Given the efforts to ban books and control what type of content is taught in schools, I think you will see more companies emerge to create the curriculum they believe parents want,” said Tyrone Howard, an education professor specializing in racial equity at the University of California, Los Angeles. “The question that must be asked is: How accurate are elements in these curricula?”
At least 19 states enacted parental rights laws or policies limiting race and gender materials in public schools from January 2021 through June 2023, PEN America reported last week. They include Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Texas and Virginia.
The New York free speech group said Republican lawmakers introduced most of the proposals after the 2021 election of Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican who emphasized parental rights in his campaign.
“It’s not a coincidence that Florida is barring teaching about sexuality and then promoting content by PragerU,” said Jonathan Friedman, an education free speech analyst at PEN America. “These efforts are being pushed at a time when people believe them to be advantageous for winning elections.”
PragerU said growing demand from teachers and school board members prompted the K-12 initiative. The company has pledged that more states will follow Florida’s lead.
Conservative resources
The PragerU videos, which feature high production values, colorful graphics and upbeat music, have earned praise from conservatives.
In one episode of “Leo & Layla’s History Adventures,” posted online as a sample lesson plan for third- to fifth-graders, two animated characters discuss the nature of the Supreme Court with Founding Father John Marshall, the fourth chief justice of the United States. Marshall teaches about the branches of the federal government.
Besides PragerU, other right-leaning K-12 education resources in recent years include Hillsdale College’s 1776 Curriculum and the Tuttle Twins franchise, which champions free markets.
Another is The Story of America, a distance learning website that uses patriotic anecdotes from the bestselling books of Reagan administration Education Secretary William Bennett, who holds a doctorate in philosophy.
“It’s good that conservatives are stepping up to the task of providing a good, sound and accurate American history to students,” Mr. Bennett said in a phone call, noting a personal friendship with Mr. Prager. “Most history curricula in the past have been either tendentious in a liberal posture or just boring.”
Connor Boyack, author of the Tuttle Twins books and a producer of the Angel Studios animated series based on them, said PragerU and other resources offer broader perspectives in left-leaning public schools.
He said more than 500 schools and 1.2 million home-schooling families use his Tuttle Twins books, which offer similar lessons on American history, politics and economics.
“It’s critically important that we review and improve what is taught as official curriculum to millions of kids in taxpayer-funded schools across the country,” said Mr. Boyack, president of the Libertas Institute, a Utah-based think tank.
Some conservative and moderate academics have faulted PragerU for mixing politics with scholarly content.
They point to videos on the site that feature right-leaning pundits such as Ben Shapiro rather than scholars.
“It is a propaganda machine, promoting mistruths about slavery and human-made climate change,” said Jonathan Zimmerman, a professor who teaches the history of education at the University of Pennsylvania.
Hillsdale, a private Christian campus in Michigan, produces its 1776 Curriculum as a free online resource on America’s founding. As of February, at least 73 schools and tens of thousands of parents had used it as part of a broader classical education curriculum featuring primary sources.
Reached for comment, two historians at Hillsdale were split on the educational merits of PragerU.
“Since when is Ben Shapiro an authority on the Federalist Papers?” said Richard Gamble, a U.S. history professor and past contributor to The American Conservative. “The curriculum is political, ideological and aims at making edgy culture warriors. It’s suffocatingly ideological.”
Wilfred McClay, an award-winning American historian who has produced videos for PragerU on the lives of U.S. presidents, was more enthusiastic.
“My own experience with PragerU has been quite positive,” Mr. McClay told The Times. “I have been thoroughly impressed by their attention to detail and insistence upon accuracy, as well as their flair in presenting often-dry material in a way that is exciting and engaging for young people.”
• Sean Salai can be reached at ssalai@washingtontimes.com.
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