Far-right PragerU co-founder admits to 'indoctrination' campaign: 'We bring doctrines to children'

30 December 2023

Content produced by the far-right group PragerU is finding its way into a growing number of public school classrooms in Republican-controlled states. And one of that group's co-founders is admitting that the content is meant to condition students into accepting conservative views.

NBC News reported Saturday that PragerU — which produces both animated and live-action short-form videos promulgating right-wing talking points — has been quietly lobbying education officials in GOP-led states to allow its videos to be used as official school-sanctioned curriculum. Classrooms in Florida, Montana, New Hampshire, Ohio and Oklahoma already show PragerU videos in classrooms, which include content produced by PragerU kids, which is geared specifically toward the student population.

Conservative radio host Dennis Prager, who co-founded the group with screenwriter Allen Estrin, has previously admitted that his organization was in the "mind-changing business." During a speech at a conference hosted by far-right anti-LGBTQ group Moms for Liberty, Prager acknowledged that he was on a mission to indoctrinate public school students.

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“We bring doctrines to children. That is a very fair statement,” Prager said, lauding PragerU's "old-fashioned approach" to education. “What is the bad of our indoctrination?’”

Ironically, education officials in Republican states are using the content Prager openly calls "indoctrination" in an ideologically-driven campaign to root out what they view as "radical left wokeism."

"There is no organization, no individuals, that have done more to strike at the heart of that left-wing dominance of education than PragerU," Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters said at a PragerU ribbon-cutting ceremony in southern California. Walters admitted to using PragerU videos in his own classrooms as a history teacher.

PragerU kids videos feature content that has been bashed by educators as misleading and false. Videos include titles like “How to be a Victor & Not a Victim,” “Mateo Backs the Blue. One video, “Leo & Layla Meet Christopher Columbus,” features an animated Christopher Columbus who tells two time-traveling children that Indigenous people at the time were “far from peaceful” and defended enslaving them, and saying it's "estupido" to judge him by modern standards.

PragerU CEO Marissa Streit admitted that her organization is fighting a "cultural war" she deems necessary in order to avoid future generations of children criticizing America.

"I don’t actually believe that America is going to be taken down by bullets and tanks," Streit told NBC. "I think that if America would be taken down, it’s through the erosion of the values and the ideas that have made our country what it is today."

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