PragerU: Coming To A School Near You

Across the country, conservatives are looking to overhaul K-12 public education with right-wing curriculums that contain misleading and inaccurate claims about slavery, racism, immigration, and LGBTQ+ history. 

In this episode of The Cost of Extremism, we’ll take a deep dive into the impact these curriculums have on public education, the harm they inflict on our children, and where they could be heading next. 

For a transcript of this episode, please email theswppod@redwine.blue.

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Transcript

Cost of Extremism - Season 2, Episode 3.

Jill (narrator): This is The Cost of Extremism, Season 2, Episode 3. PragerU. Coming to a school near you. 

Clips from PragerU videos: Being taken as a slave is better than being killed, no? 

One of the most beautiful things God has created is a woman's smile. 

Did that bird just get killed by a windmill? 

I'm certainly not okay with slavery, but the founding fathers made a compromise to achieve something great.

Jill (narrator): Now, most of us know that those statements aren't true. As adults, we can easily roll our eyes, brush this disinformation off, and go on with our day. But it's deeper than that. These are real talking points being taught to our kids through the public school system, thanks to PragerU, a conservative media company whose only goal is to spread right wing ideology to our kids.

To be more specific, and to use PragerU's own words, they are, quote, created to inoculate children against the woke and anti American leftist narrative taught in most schools. 

Jessica Wright: PragerU is an interesting beast, right, because it comes with this idea that it's Prager University, and it sort of lends itself to this, like, prestige, I think, in the name in itself.

Jill (narrator): That was Jessica Wright, Director of Education and Implementation with Florida Freedom to Read Project. She's also a certified teacher in Florida, a native Floridian, and a parent of two kids in Florida's public school system. 

Jessica Wright: The founder himself, you know, Dennis Prager, they started this, I think it was in 2009, so about 15 years ago, and his entire idea is that education is ruining the next generation with leftist ideas. And so they want to combat that with what they call edu-tainment. And so they're just a huge media company, essentially putting out videos, putting out handouts, even. And their entire point is that they want to indoctrinate. 

And that is Dennis Prager's words. He has said, “what is the problem with us wanting to indoctrinate kids? We want them to think like us. We want them to see America in the way that we see it, which is perfect. And we want to make sure that they adopt conservative ideas.”

Jill (narrator): As Jessica said, PragerU was created in 2009 by Dennis Prager, a conservative Los Angeles talk radio host and Allen Estrin, a screenwriter. Prager initially intended for PragerU to be a real accredited university, but when Estrin suggested an online university, the version of PragerU we now know was born. 

But just to make it perfectly clear, they're not a university at all. They're not accredited or an academic institution. They're a media company. While they originally targeted teens and college students, they've since expanded their focus to cartoons and classroom material for elementary school aged children. We're talking about students as young as five years old. The short, five minute long videos are professional and eye-catching, made with bright animation to catch the attention of their audience of children.

In their 2023 biannual report, they state that their content has been viewed 8 billion times. That's billion with a B. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, their content works as a dog whistle for the extreme right. They're well organized, well connected, and succeeding on a large scale thanks to their donors. While they're technically a non-profit, a lot of their funding comes from billionaires. Fracking billionaires, to be exact. Dan and Ferris Wilkes have donated millions to the media group over the past decade. PragerU has also received funding from the Lindy and Harry Bradley Foundation, which has supported conservative education policy priorities, including The teaching of American exceptionalism.

And when you get billionaires with no educational background funding classroom material, you're not going to get the best quality education. News organizations and prominent historians have fact checked PragerU videos on their claims about United States history and the science of climate change, and have found repeated misinformation.

Jessica Wright: When we are tailoring the curriculum based off of political interest, that in and of itself is a problem. But when we're looking at how much dark money and privatization has infected education, and it's become a part of that taxpayer grift, I think we're going to continue to see more adoptions of places like or things like PragerU and Dave Ramsey and normalizing the involvement of Hillsdale, which is is mind blowing to me.

When we're talking about instructional materials, I, I like to refer to them as like a tertiary like ecosystem, right? It's not quite the government, um, and it's not quite privatization. It is, but the way that they have to go through the bid process, the politics that are involved in it, it has become a billion dollar industry.

And I think that that's what people don't realize is they think that there's no money in education. It just really depends on what room you're sitting in, but there can be a lot of money in education. 

Jill (narrator): According to tax records, PragerU raked in close to 200 million from 2018 to 2022, with big checks from top conservative donors. Tax records also reveal that PragerU has flourished financially in recent years as the PragerU University Foundation raised 196 million from 2018 through 2022. That growth is underscored by revenues rising from 17.9 million in 2018 to 65.1 million in 2018. To keep growing its audience and operations, Prager U's website showcases several ambitious fundraising programs.

Last fall, Prager U hosted a Founders Retreat in Nashville that seemed geared to wooing more checks from major donors who give at least $100,000 a year. The event was slated to be an exclusive three day experience with the innermost circle of supporters, and featured Dennis Prager, the conservative Daily Wire's editor in chief, Ben Shapiro and other Daily Wire personalities. In case you don't know, the Daily Wire is an American's conservative news website and media company. 

Another conservative organization Dennis Prager is associated with is Turning Point USA, an American nonprofit organization Lead by Charlie Kirk that advocates for conservative politics on high school, college, and university campuses. Dennis Prager is listed under their Speakers Bureau on the website as a leader you can connect with for campus event requests and networking opportunities. We'll dig more into Turning Point USA in the next episode. 

Teaching American exceptionalism in schools is nothing new. But where did the need for it to be taught in schools come from? Dr. Reginald Ellis, an associate professor of history at Florida A&M University, one of the largest historically Black colleges and universities in the country, ties it back to the summer of 2020. 

Reginald Ellis: I often remind my colleagues, my friends, say, “Hey, look, when you go back, if you get a chance to go back and look at the videos of the summer of 2020, and you look at the streets, the vast majority of those individuals were white, white people saying Black lives matter.” And from my assessment, that scared the hell out of the far right. Because it was one thing when it was Black people saying it, but it was another when it was their children, their nieces and nephews, their grandchildren that we're protesting the death, the murder, the lynching of George Floyd. That's when you start to really hear this, “Oh, our children are being indoctrinated in the K-12 system. Our children are being taught to be liberal at colleges and universities. This is not how I raised them.” 

And so when you see a Glenn Youngkin get elected, you know, riding around the state of Virginia in a red vest saying that the parents should have the rights over their curriculum, the dog whistle for me in that moment was, “we don't want our kids taught about the Black experience because we don't, they shouldn't feel bad about what happened in the past.”

And you know, they weren't feeling bad about what happened in the past. They were feeling bad about what happened to what they saw happen to George Floyd. Right. Right. Right. And when they started asking questions about how could something like this happen, and that's when people started to tell these individuals in a lay way, the history of George Floyd, Black people were saying, “well, this is… George Floyd happens virtually every day. This is what we've been saying. And here's the history of it.” 

Jill (narrator): We also need to address one year earlier in August of 2019, when the first publication from the 1619 Project was in the New York Times Magazine. The 1619 Project is a long form journalism endeavor developed by Nikole Hannah Jones, writers from the New York Times and the New York Times Magazine. It focused on subjects of slavery and the founding of the United States. August 2019 is the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery, and this ongoing initiative aims to reframe the country's history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.

Nikole Hannah Jones was awarded the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for the 1619 Project, but not everyone celebrated this accomplishment. And it led to other curriculums being developed, like the curriculum by 1776 Unites, which aims to create an alternative to the 1619 Project. On its website, it states that this curriculum offers authentic, inspiring stories from American history that show what is best in our national character and what our freedom makes possible, even in the most difficult circumstances.

But if these videos are so quote unquote authentic, then why did Dr. Ellis have a hard time believing that these videos were even real the first time he watched them? 

Reginald Ellis: I went and looked at some of the videos when they first started to circulate around here, and the first time I saw it, I laughed about it because I said, “this can't be real. This can't be something that they're going to put in the school system.” To me, it goes totally against House Bill 999 because it is indoctrination, right? It's indoctrination for a particular political viewpoint, but it's very, very dangerous because we, we do know that there are school systems and districts, I should say, that are conservative leaning that will utilize those animations to instruct their students. 

But here's the thing. Those school systems may not have one Black kid in it, or those classrooms may not have one Black kid in it. That's what's dangerous, right? It's dangerous for any kid to be exposed to it, but it's even more dangerous for kids who are not exposed to a multicultural group of people to be exposed to this type of education.

And so from a scholar's perspective, you know, I just watched a video on slavery today, and I found myself laughing, but then in the moment of laughter, I said, “no, this is dangerous, because somebody's kid is going to be indoctrinated or inculcated with this concept, and they may not, it may not ever be undone.”

Jill (narrator): What it really is is a mosh pit of misinformation and dangerous right wing rhetoric, and it might be coming to a school near you. In late July 2023, the Florida Board of Education approved the use of PragerU Kids videos to be shown in K-12 schools. The Florida Department of Education stated that the Prager U kids material aligns with Florida's revised civics and government standards.

Those standards are broad. For example, teachers are required to review the causes and consequences of the Civil War. But nowhere does it state that they have to teach accurate history, which is where Prager U comes in. Along with Montana and New Hampshire, Oklahoma soon followed suit in allowing the content in their public schools. Ryan Walters, Oklahoma State Superintendent of Public Instruction, and other officials said that PragerU videos were a way to give a pro-American education. 

Ashley Daly: Our state superintendent is a very, very aggressive person, Brian Walters. He announced that partnership in September and basically said, you know, “oh, we've had this partnership and now teachers across the state can use this curriculum.” And it's on our state website, I guess. My reaction was, whoa, I'd heard about PragerU in Florida and I was like, oh, I need to look at what this is. And I looked closer and I was horrified. 

Jill (narrator): Ashley Daly is a public school advocate and a parent to a second grader in a Tulsa public school. 

Ashley Daly: I started asking leaders, you know, “Can he do this? What does this mean?” And just trying to figure out how deep it would go in Oklahoma. 95 percent of Oklahomans send their kids to public schools. Those are the people around us. They're around us at the grocery store, they are our neighbors, they are our future doctors, they are our future policy makers, and they need to be educated so they can take care of us. 

PragerU said, was saying that universities are indoctrination centers. So now we're telling Oklahoma kids, don't go to college? Who's going to be my doctor when I'm old, you know, or anyone's doctor? People don't want to move to a state where their kids won't get a real education. 

Jill (narrator): There's real harm in allowing PragerU to be used in education, and they're not the only ones bringing dangerous right wing rhetoric into our public schools. Another organization at the center of changing K-12 education is a Christian college. Republican officials are turning to Hillsdale College in Michigan for teacher training, textbook reviews and a curriculum that celebrates American patriotism. They have gone as far as creating a curriculum company, Vermillion Education, headed by a consultant with little experience and a goal to whitewash history in the name of American exceptionalism.

PragerU, Vermillion Education, Hillsdale College, and Turning Point USA want to keep us from moving forward and embracing the multicultural democracy that is becoming a reality. 

Reginald Ellis: The reason that our kids need to learn it is because they're growing up together in ways that even my generation did not necessarily grow up together with, right? We live in a really inclusive society. Our neighbors don't look like us. The individuals who go to the grocery store, because we don't, in some ways, live in a segregated society. 

So if you're living around people who come from different socioeconomic backgrounds, you're living around and working with and going to school with people from every walk of life, why not learn about them, right? Why not learn about them in every format, right? From, “I need, I want to know about your culture. I want to know about your music. I want to know about your culinary palate. I want to know everything about you. So now I understand your idiosyncrasies.” 

Jill (narrator): Dr. Ellis also talks about how being exposed to African American history beyond the surface for the very first time changed the trajectory of his life.

Reginald Ellis: I came to this university in 1999 as a freshman from Wigham, Georgia, that had never really truly been exposed to African American history as an occupational therapy major. My first Wednesday night course was the introduction to African American history. And the first night, I, uh, I called my mom and told her that I was changing my major to African American studies.

Although my mother had worked at Florida A&M University and I had been exposed to Florida A&M University, what I had not been exposed to was seeing myself and hearing about myself in history, one three hour class, uh, that gave me a different purpose. So I stopped thinking about, you know, came to college to earn a good to find a good job to earn money. And then that one class really reoriented the way I looked at why I was in college. I had now come to college to learn more about myself, myself and my people. 

Jill (narrator): Shouldn't every student have the opportunity to learn about themselves in school and at an earlier age than the college level? This is the direction a majority of us want to move in, but a few loud, rich voices are keeping that from happening.

Many of the videos produced by PragerU are hosted by controversial conservative personalities such as Ben Shapiro, Candace Owens, Charlie Kirk, and David Rubin. You know who else has played a significant role in propelling PragerU forward? To no one's surprise, it's Elon Musk. In November of 2023, PragerU released a short documentary entitled “Detrans: The Dangers of Gender Affirming Care,” which focuses on criticizing young people's access to gender affirming care, despite both of the main characters being adults.

Now I use the word documentary loosely. According to the Human Rights Campaign, the largest LGBTQ plus group, detransitioning is rare and often the result of environmental factors rather than regret. More than a dozen major medical associations, including the American Medical Association and the American Psychological Association, support access to care. PragerU spent a million dollars on their marketing campaign, which included a timeline takeover on X, formerly known as Twitter. The takeover ensured that everyone who uses X saw the Detrans promotion. They praised X for allowing their promotion, stating that YouTube immediately rejected their proposal. PragerU's chief marketing officer, Craig Stazzari, named Musk as the reason they decided to advertise on X. 

But don't lose hope. There are communities pushing back against this, and winning. 

Laura Foster is one of the co-founders of Ridge Network, an advocacy group working to defend all students rights to a safe and welcoming learning environment in the Pennridge School District in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. In the fall of 2023, their school board voted 5-4 to sign on with Vermillion Education, which is connected to the Christian Hillsdale College. 

Laura Foster: One of the things that Hillsdale does is that there is a guy there that's been a teacher of some private, like, Hillsdale colleges, like, of a Catholic school. His name is Jordan Adams. So he's a graduate of Hillsdale, you know, deeply affiliated with Hillsdale, wrote the 1776 curriculum, which is, uh, based out of Hillsdale, and it is the American exceptionalism ideology, whitewashes history. It’s a social studies curriculum for the college. 

So Jordan Adams comes from this college and starts Vermilion education. The premise of Vermilion follows the premise of Hillsdale, which follows the premise of the 1776 commission. Vermillion is also deeply tied with Moms for Liberty. Like Jordan Adams is in that world. He was one of the speakers at the Moms for Liberty conference, um, in Philadelphia this past summer, talking about how to overtake a school board, how to create chaos.

So our school board members have some Moms for Liberty people, and we know that they had been meeting with Hillsdale now. We know that it had been, for about a year, close to a year before they had actually, um, proposed the contract with Vermilion and then they slam the community and some of the school board members that didn't know about it with a 24-hour notice to be like, “We're going to contract with Vermilion education just to talk about social studies.” 

But it wasn't. The intent was fully to go through all of our curriculum, kindergarten through high school, to pull out anything that they find against deep, uh, fundamentalist values. We had one of our social studies teachers go through his curriculum and pulled out space after space after space about this is historically inaccurate, historically inaccurate, historically inaccurate, like a whole page of it.

It's just absolutely ridiculous. And then there's a space of whitewashing our history. 

So for my children, I don't want them to grow up and think that like there weren't struggles to get to where America is today. I don't want them to think that there's not going to continue to be struggles and disadvantages and racism and homophobia and transphobia because that is a part of our world. I'm not saying that it is the only thing that is a part of our world, but when you take that out, you're taking out the real history.

Jill (narrator): Laura and the Ridge Network weren't the only ones in their community who felt that way. All five open seats on the school board in November 2023 were won by candidates who ran in opposition to culture wars, secret agreements, poor policies and the adoption of the curriculum recommended by Jordan Adams. The outgoing board ended the contract with Vermilion Education just days before the new board took over. 

Laura Foster: Our school district is in a better space, I would say, because it looks like some of the school board directors are really paying attention to curriculum and trying to move the school in a forward space, but there is so much work that needs to be done.

Jill (narrator): Vermilion Education was stopped in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, but PragerU is expanding its influence in states across the country. So how can we be a part of stopping curriculums like PragerU from ending up in our own schools? 

Laura Foster: One of the things that we really encourage and do ourselves is conversations. And be like, “did you know what's going on in the school board? Did you hear this? Did you know that?” Like, just having that, like, opening up a conversation about what's happening. Because a lot of parents don't know. And you don't know until you need to know, right? Like, sometimes, like, something bad will happen and it affects your kid and you're like, “Oh, wait a second. Why can't this happen? Like, why is there like summary citations happening to children? Like, this is weird.” 

Ashley Daly: I'm a big fan of grabbing everybody you think cares and putting them in a room and seeing what you come up with. It helps not to feel so alone. 

Jessica Wright: I hope parents feel empowered to be more involved in their school, volunteering, you know, reaching out to their teacher, having more conversations if they can.

But the other thing I also just want to remind people of is how much is going on that's intentionally designed for them, you know, to put them in the dark, essentially, and, you know, the more aware we become, the more we're able to advocate for sensibility. 

Reginald Ellis: From a scholarly perspective, I think we have to humanize academics. We are not these boogeymen who are trying to turn the United States of America into a socialist communist, uh, pantheon, right? We're just individual, normal, living, breathing, walking, talking people who want to see the United States develop better citizens. 

Jill (narrator): Develop better citizens. I think that's something we can all stand behind.

If you're looking for like minded people that want healthy public schools, join the Red, White, and Blue community. We have a parent playbook that can help you fight back against far right extremism in your kids schools. And we can give you the tools, trainings, and techniques you need to lead the charge in organizing people in your local community through our program, Trouble Nation.