‘To fight the leftists’ lies’: Conservative PragerU resources available to Idaho schools

PragerU, a conservative nonprofit that releases short videos on a variety of topics, will now have hundreds of its resources available to Idaho schools.

The nonprofit — the namesake of right-wing commentator and political analyst Dennis Prager — has been working to get its materials into schools for years. PragerU’s website asks readers to sign a petition to help with their mission, decrying what it claims is the left’s hijacking and control of the education system.

“We’re hoping that it does generate discussion and conversation,” Idaho Superintendent of Public Instruction Debbie Critchfield, a Republican, said in a video interview on PragerU’s site. “That’s what education, the system that we have at the local level is about. It is about generating the interest, the conversations and saying, “What does the local community want to see in the classroom?’”

The Idaho Department of Education approved a list of more than 400 resources that align with K-12 social studies standards, according to a news release. No one with PragerU was immediately available for comment.

The Idaho Education Association, the state’s teachers union, did not immediately return a request for comment.

The resources are free, so the state does not incur any costs, according to Scott Graf, Idaho Department of Education communications director. Any local districts who adopt the resources also would not incur any costs.

School curricula have been hotly debated since the pandemic, including in Idaho. Officials have fought over how students are taught about race and brought in new materials regarding history.

“As with many things in education these days, there are varying opinions on the materials. I can tell you that as part of her evaluation process, the superintendent reviewed many of them herself and she was ultimately comfortable with what she saw,” Graf wrote in a statement. “At the end of the day, it will be up to local districts and charters as to whether these resources will be used in their classrooms.“

However, educators around the country have raised issues about PragerU’s content.

In one PragerU video, two kids journey to the past to speak to Christopher Columbus.

Columbus, unfazed by the time travelers, defends slavery as “old as time.” He says to the children, “Being a slave is better than being killed, no? I don’t see the problem.”

The group’s most popular YouTube video on its Kids channel features two parents horrified that their child thinks America is racist.

“This content is for your child’s mind to fight the leftists’ lies,” the narrator said.

Holocaust materials

PragerU is available in more states than just Idaho. However, there’s another dimension at play.

The nonprofit, for the first time, is providing Holocaust materials to Idaho. Legislators this year passed a resolution encouraging the adoption of “age-appropriate” materials in school about the Holocaust, the murder of millions of people by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany, including six million Jews, before and during World War II.

One such video, a fireside chat with Prager, is listed in a PragerU document from the website as appropriate for grades 8 and up. However, the video barely mentions the Holocaust itself.

Instead, Prager spent much of the 30-minute video talking about Hamas and Hezbollah, and the attack in Israel that occurred on Oct. 7, 2023. Prager also said that communism has killed more people than any doctrine, that “cycle of violence” is a “stupid” term, and that a weakening United States is being taken advantage of by “evil regimes” that go unnamed.

Prager also gave advice to people on how to explain that western civilization is morally superior.

“People learn so little in high school and college,” Prager asserted in the video. “It’s really basic.”