PragerU
PragerU’s Jill Simonian, with mascot Otto, in one of the organization’s newest videos aimed at early elementary–aged children.
Last week, the Prospect reported that students across the country have been shown right-wing content from nonprofit educational video maker PragerU for years, even though it was supposedly intended for adults. Since last fall, however, the conservative organization has aggressively fundraised for PragerU Resources for Educators and Parents (PREP), a new education program targeted directly at school-age children. In the initiative’s first batch of education-specific content, released Monday, PragerU now has videos aimed at children as young as kindergarten age.
The content includes online videos and other materials designed for ages 5 to 18. This material is meant to be shown in school or at home, and although the videos aren’t as overtly political as PragerU’s typical five-minute videos for adults, they are still suffused with right-wing propaganda.
PragerU’s website advertises its content with a chirpy marketing message: “Fun shows and crafting activities created for young children that teach American history along with traditional values like faith, family, and freedom.” Using popular platforms like Instagram and Twitter, PragerU has long strived to get its content in front of young people. But now, that target age has plummeted.
For kindergarten through second grade, one of the new educational segments is a “storytime” that “celebrates American values of freedom, individuality, hard work, equality under God and more,” starring the head of outreach for PREP, Jill Simonian, and a mascot named Otto, modeled on the bulldog of the organization’s founder, Dennis Prager. The first video features the book Paloma Wants to Be Lady Freedom, by Rachel Campos-Duffy, a regular Fox News contributor whose politics deeply align with PragerU’s mission. (Campos-Duffy’s husband Sean Duffy was a five-term Republican congressman from Wisconsin who is now also a Fox News contributor.)
The story follows the daughter of an immigrant who travels to Washington, D.C., to become an American citizen. The story is innocuously packaged, and at times seems to support immigration. But ultimately, as is the case with much of PragerU’s content, it embraces American exceptionalism, an important strand of conservative ideology. “I’m glad we went to Washington, D.C., Daddy,” the little girl declares at the end of the book. “I love America.”
The book is published by Regnery, the longtime conservative publishing house that picked up a book about Big Tech by Sen. Josh Hawley after Simon & Schuster dropped it following the Capitol Riot on January 6. By showcasing a Regnery product, PragerU is taking part in the larger conservative ecosystem.
“The left’s dangerous ideology continues its slow creep into all facets of American life,” Campos-Duffy said last week on Fox News Primetime. “And while conservatives were politely debating ideas and our fancy think tanks were churning out policy papers, progressives were ruthlessly conquering cultural territory.”
Campos-Duffy is making the case that Democrats control schools and large swaths of culture. But according to students across the country, right-wing content like PragerU’s videos is extremely prevalent in public schools. And through other avenues, like the “Republican Hype House” on TikTok, which has over a million followers, young conservatives are actively shaping online culture too.
Former high school students have complained online about being shown adult-oriented PragerU videos, which are popular among some history and economics teachers. None of the students interviewed for last week’s Prospect story were comfortable confronting their teachers or school administrators, even though they recognized the conservative agenda behind the videos.
But when it comes to younger children, the concern among some early-education experts is that five-year-olds lack the critical thinking skills to enable them to recognize video content as political, let alone right-leaning.
“To have teachers push their own political agenda, which is so often aligned with values, becomes potentially dangerous,” said Jennifer Rich, assistant professor of sociology at Rowan University and author of the forthcoming book Politics, Education, and Social Problems: Complicated Classroom Conversations. “Kids can’t leave if they disagree with something the teacher’s saying.”
Five-year-olds lack the critical thinking skills to enable them to recognize video content as political, let alone right-leaning.
Meanwhile, Dennis Prager has been in a long-standing ethical and legal war with platforms like Facebook and Google for censoring PragerU’s content online. Prager filed a lawsuit against Google in 2019 for “unlawfully restricting and restraining speech and expression.” The California circuit court dismissed the suit. And on April 2, TikTok went further than the other tech giants by permanently banning the nonprofit’s account.
PREP segments for older schoolchildren include condensed histories of right-wing women like Margaret Thatcher, Ayn Rand, and Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett; an animated time-travel series; and curated playlists of PragerU videos for adults.
Another segment for kindergarteners is called “Craftory,” a play on the words “Crafts” and “History” that uses creative projects as a venue for history lessons with a conservative bent. The only “Craftory” video released so far centers on a “Military Appreciation Wreath,” which is constructed with a patriotic combination of red-white-and-blue and camouflage fabric, all adorned with a yellow ribbon to show support for U.S. troops.
The so-called “history lesson” turns out to be a primer on the U.S. military and its various branches. As the first video released in the series, the wreath lesson puts PragerU’s priorities front and center. In the video, Simonian clarifies that while she is using red-white-and-blue swatches, the fabric did not actually come from a flag. “Never, ever, ever,” she exhorts, “cut up an American flag to make anything.”
