A controversial content producer whose videos will soon be available in South Carolina public schools spoke openly in 2023 of his efforts to “indoctrinate kids” into conservative views, according to videos and social media posts.
Dennis Prager, president of PragerU, made the remarks last year at a Moms for Liberty conference in Philadelphia at which S.C. Superintendent of Education Ellen Weaver was a panelist.
Last week, Weaver announced a new partnership to place “high quality, standards-aligned” PragerU videos and lesson plans in S.C. public school classrooms. But critics say the videos are little more than conservative propaganda — a charge that Prager seemed to play into with his remarks at the conference.
In a June 29, 2023, Moms for Liberty keynote address, Prager told attendees that he’d recently asked a group of protesters why they thought he was “despicable.”
“All I heard was, ‘Well, because you indoctrinate kids.’ Which is true. We bring doctrines to children. That is a very fair statement,” Prager said. “But what is the bad of our indoctrination?”
Statehouse Report asked Weaver’s press spokesperson Monday whether Prager’s comments raised concerns for the superintendent. As of publication time Wednesday, the newspaper received no reply.
But S.C. Education Association President Sherry East called Prager’s indoctrination remarks “disturbing” in a Monday interview.
“I’ve reached out to the social studies community and I will tell you they are not happy,” East said. “We absolutely should not be using these videos in our classrooms.”
What is PragerU?
Founded in 2009 by talk-radio host Dennis Prager and his longtime producer Allen Estrin, the Prager University Foundation, or PragerU, is a nonprofit that produces short videos (typically about five minutes) on politics, religion and history. It’s funded by a variety of conservative individuals and foundations, including fracking-billionaires Farris and Dan Wilks, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, and the Dick and Betsy DeVos Foundation.
Despite its name, each page of the PragerU website carries the following fine-print disclaimer: “PragerU is not an accredited university, nor do we claim to be. We don’t offer degrees, but we do provide educational, entertaining, pro-American videos for every age.”
But these videos aren’t like the Boomer-era Schoolhouse Rock videos, such as “How a Bill Becomes a Law.” Rather, PragerU’s videos, which the organization says have racked up more than 9 billion views over the years, feature well-known conservative pundits, professors and celebrities presenting on a host of topical issues, such as “The Good News About Climate Change” and “What Radical Islam and the Woke Have in Common.”
Specific videos that have come under fire from teachers include one in which a cartoon Christopher Columbus tells time-traveling kids that “being a slave is better than being killed,” and another with a cartoon Frederick Douglass who incorrectly teaches children that the United States was early to the cause of abolition.
Another frequently-raised concern involves the video presenters themselves. While most of the site’s 360 performers are widely-respected members of the conservative mainstream — people like Stanford University history professor Niall Ferguson and political columnist George Will — critics say that many others come from the far-right fringe of American politics. Commonly cited examples include:
- Candace Owens: Fired by The Daily Wire after what the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) described as “escalating antisemitic rhetoric,” Owens has called Judaism a “pedophile-centric religion that believes in demons [and] child sacrifice.”
- Tucker Carlson: Dismissed by Fox News in 2023, Carlson has been called “the most influential voice in right-wing media.” Now an X-based podcaster, he was widely condemned last month (including by many conservatives) for hosting, and praising, an amateur historian who contends that Winston Churchill, not Adolf Hitler, was the “true villain” of World War II.
- Dinesh D’Souza: Pardoned by President Trump after a felony conviction for making illegal campaign contributions, D’Souza’s 2022 documentary film 2000 Mules alleged that Democrats conspired to steal the 2020 election by using “mules” to stuff ballot drop boxes around the country. After being sued for defamation, the film’s distributor withdrew the movie, publicly apologized for its false claims and settled for an undisclosed “substantial” amount.
- Jack Posobiec: Described by the ADL as an alt-right “conspiracy theorist and author,” Posobiac actively promoted the “Pizzagate” conspiracy, which claimed that a Hillary Clinton-approved pedophile ring was operating in the basement of a Washington, DC pizzeria.
- Kari Lake: A former news anchor and current candidate for U.S. Senate in Arizona, Lake has promoted conspiracy theories involving President Trump’s election loss in 2020 and her own in the Arizona governor’s race in 2022. In 2023, she was successfully sued for defamation by a GOP election official she accused of fraud.
Other PragerU presenters who’ve raised eyebrows include controversial figures such as Turning Point USA President Charlie Kirk, “In Defense of Internment” author Michelle Malkin, and indicted former Trump attorney John Eastman.
Brandon Fish of the Charleston Jewish Federation said he’s troubled by some of the people PragerU has chosen to spotlight.
“The fact that PragerU uses figures like Candace Owens who’ve been documented as putting forward antisemitic ideas is really concerning to us,” Fish said. “We just want our kids to be able to go to schools and not have curricular materials that are attempting to convert them to a different religion or indoctrinate them with partisan ideologies.”
What’s next for PragerU in SC?
In a Sept. 20 statement, S.C. Department of Education spokesman Jason Raven said the agency “continues to work with PragerU to finalize a customized list of resources which will be provided to the public on the Department website and through an existing curriculum portal for teachers.”
To kick off that process, PragerU released a 67-page spreadsheet containing videos it says are “aligned” with South Carolina educational standards. Listed titles run the gamut, from “Why Frog and Snake Never Play” and “The Little Red Hen” to “Income Inequality is Good” and “Was Jesus a Socialist?”
Meanwhile, legislators seem split along party lines on the issue.
“Current school curriculum includes boat-loads of leftwing rhetoric and faith-based philosophy,” Berkeley County Republican and S.C. Freedom Caucus Chair Rep. Jordan Pace wrote in a Sept. 16 social media post. “[If] the state is going to have an effective monopoly on education, then Gov’t school curriculum should match the values of the majority of its people. Democracy, right?”
But in a Sept. 20 press conference, Richland Democratic Rep. Jermaine Johnson condemned the new partnership and called on the superintendent to change course.
“Do not indoctrinate our children,” he said. “I’m saying today, I’m demanding today, stop indoctrinating our children.”
According to ACLU of S.C. spokesman Paul Bowers, those seemingly polarized positions aren’t necessarily irreconcilable.
In a Monday interview, he told the City Paper that students can, and should, be exposed to a wide variety of ideas, including the kind espoused by PragerU, only without the seeming goal of indoctrination.
“There’s a thoughtful way to present opposing views and help students draw their own conclusions,” Bowers said. “But what the superintendent is doing is far removed from that.”
- This story was first published in the Charleston City Paper. Have a comment? Send to: feedback@statehousereport.com.
We Can Do Better, South Carolina!