PragerU Is Now in Schools. Teacher Unions Are Fuming.
C.J. Pearson /
For more than a decade, we at PragerU have been dedicated to helping America’s next generation live and think better by producing pro-America educational content that doesn’t just reach billions of people each and every year, but also changes hearts and changes minds.
And now, with our recently announced partnerships with the states of Florida, Texas, and Oklahoma, PragerU is now in schools.
Last month, Florida approved PragerU as an educational vendor in the state, allowing teachers throughout Florida to use PragerU materials directly in their classrooms without any fear of reprimand or reprisal.
Immediately, the Left devolved into a tailspin. Joy Reid of MSNBC labeled us a “racist” organization. California Gov. Gavin Newsom derided us as “propaganda.” And if this isn’t just the icing on the cake, NBC accused us of perpetuating “indoctrination by cartoon,” referring to our animated series “Leo and Layla’s History Adventures” and our financial literacy series “Cash Course.”
And this tailspin shows little indication of ending anytime soon, especially in light of Texas’ decision to approve PragerU as a vendor and Oklahoma’s decision last week to join the fray as well.
With all of the Left’s recent outrage, I’ll admit, it has left me pondering: Since when did the Left give a darn about indoctrination?
Since when did they hold signs outside of school board meetings—like they did in New Hampshire as the State Board of Education deliberated on a proposal to allow PragerU’s financial literacy videos and lesson plans to be counted for course credit for high school students—that read “Education NOT Indoctrination”?
And since when was financial literacy “indoctrination”? Since when did the word “indoctrination” even exist in the vernacular of the Left and the deep-pocketed union bosses they’re beholden to?
I’m still struggling to answer that one.
Because if the Left really cared about indoctrination—and I’m placing a lot of emphasis here on the really—where were their protests when critical race theory seeped into America’s schools, casting white children as oppressors, black children as victims, and America as a perpetual villain?
Where were the Left’s condemnations when a California high school teacher forced her students to watch a “Pride” video during math class and threatened punishment if they didn’t comply? It was a video so inappropriate that one student asked in a video that has since gone viral, “Why are you showing this to kids?”
The answers to these questions are simple: Never and nowhere to be found. Because, to answer my earlier question, the Left doesn’t actually care about indoctrination.
What they have a problem with is competition. For decades, the Left has been allowed unfettered and unmitigated access to America’s classrooms and, by extension, to the hearts and minds of America’s children.
With little (if any) challenge, they have been allowed to promote dangerous and false ideas, from the notion that America is a systemically racist country whose history is defined by little more than slavery to nonsensical fallacies that portray gender as no more than a social construct or an antiquity of the past.
The Left isn’t lashing out at PragerU because they’re concerned about “indoctrination.” They’re lashing out because they’re concerned that their monopoly on the psyche of America’s young people might finally be coming to an end, and because as PragerU enters more and more classrooms throughout the country, they fear that America’s children might finally (and much to their chagrin) hear the other side to the one-sided agenda they have long perpetuated.
But do you know what the irony in all of this is? While the Left has never shied away from injecting politics into the classroom, that has never been the goal of PragerU.
Our goal has been—and will always be—to simply inject truth. Nothing more, nothing less.
The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation.
Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email [email protected], and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the URL or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.