These are just some of the episodes of PragerU Kids.

September 12, 2023 11:05 AM

Florida and Oklahoma have just approved PragerU Kids for use in public school classrooms. In “Poland: Ania’s Energy Crisis,” a young girl learning about climate change decides to stand up for fossil fuel energy. Though ostracized by her peers, she is supported by her family members, who compare her bravery to that of the Polish Jews in the Warsaw Uprising.
posted by spamandkimchi (41 comments total)

🤯

In “Leo & Layla Meet Booker T. Washington,” the sibling duo meet with the famous Black educator, who reassures them they should not feel bad about American slavery.

When Layla asks Washington if he wishes he could have lived in a country that had outlawed slavery, he responds that slavery has “been a reality everywhere in the world,” and misleadingly claims, “America was one of the first places on Earth to outlaw slavery.” Washington reassures the kids that he is proud to be American. [YouTube,
2/24/23]
posted by spamandkimchi at 11:08 AM on September 12, 2023 [4 favorites]

Florida is on verge of allowing a right-wing alternative to the SAT

Between this and all the Florida universities becoming right wing diploma mills with sports teams attached I’d say they were on the verge of serparting themselves into their own little alternate universe of countefactual education, except Republicans everywhere are eager to drag their states after them.
posted by Artw at 11:09 AM on September 12, 2023 [13 favorites]

This is the worst timeline
posted by chavenet at 11:11 AM on September 12, 2023 [25 favorites]

How this wannabe Jimmy Swaggart Oral Roberts Pat Robertson Jerry Falwell (none of them theological even bantamweights in their own right) has managed to get any purchase in the American landscape is just mind-blowing, which is to say: Of course.
posted by riverlife at 11:12 AM on September 12, 2023 [5 favorites]

True learnding
posted by gottabefunky at 11:21 AM on September 12, 2023 [2 favorites]

Those that fail to let their children learn from history are eager to repeat it.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 11:23 AM on September 12, 2023 [18 favorites]

how do you keyboard smash in despair on a mobile device?

I don't get the obsession with ancestral guilt, the need to brush it all under the rug. Has American individualism soured into rampant narcissistic tendencies?

That didn’t happen.
And if it did, it wasn’t that bad.
And if it was, it wasn't my fault.
And if it was, I didn’t mean it.
And if I did, you deserved it.
posted by Baethan at 11:23 AM on September 12, 2023 [36 favorites]

"Those Who Can Make You Believe Absurdities Can Make You Commit Atrocities" -- Voltaire

..dunno why this quote keeps popping into my head
posted by heyitsgogi at 11:27 AM on September 12, 2023 [50 favorites]

Dynastic wealth and ancestral guilt are inseparable phenomena.
posted by grokus at 11:28 AM on September 12, 2023 [9 favorites]

The episode draws similarities between social media backlash and spending time in a Russian gulag. At one point, Leo tells Solzhenitsyn that “nobody’s getting thrown in a gulag” in modern times, “but people are getting punished just for their opinions and what they say.” Layla tells the author about how their father getting “attacked for speaking up,” to which Solzhenitsyn replies, “Sounds familiar."

That's.....a lot to unpack about Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn!
posted by fortitude25 at 11:39 AM on September 12, 2023 [13 favorites]

Protect American freedumb at all costs.
posted by nikoniko at 11:51 AM on September 12, 2023

“PragerU for Kids: A Horrible YouTube Channel”—Big Joel, 07 September 2023
posted by ob1quixote at 11:56 AM on September 12, 2023 [5 favorites]

I don't get the obsession with ancestral guilt


It's not guilt, it's denial. If the fissure of history never happened, then they're one step closer to their desire for a clean, white future.
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 11:57 AM on September 12, 2023 [4 favorites]

What is absolutely infuriating about this is that the well-organized attack on education (book banning, Moms for Liberty, critical race theory, etc.) focuses on the baseless allegation that teachers are trying to indoctrinate your kids.

But in reality, they were only upset that they weren't the ones doing the indoctrinating! Teaching kids that slavery is bad is somehow harmful, but teaching kids that supporting fossil fuels is the same as fighting Nazis is a-ok!

The truth is that high quality education exposes children to viewpoints and ideas (as well as diverse individuals) that may be opposed to the views of their parents. So this is a bald-faced move to do to children what Fox News did to boomers -- create brainless followers who believe whatever the right-wing machine tells them to believe. ARGH!
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 12:09 PM on September 12, 2023 [35 favorites]

I swear to Dog, it is impossible to tell whether descriptions of PragerU videos are parody or real.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 12:14 PM on September 12, 2023 [18 favorites]

Both of the teachers in my life repeatedly say that if they could indoctrinate kids, they'd use it to get them to put their phones and ear buds away and please read the assignment.
posted by drewbage1847 at 12:18 PM on September 12, 2023 [58 favorites]

I think ancestral guilt or preoccupation therewith is really thinly veiled current guilt. The main difference between these folks and their ancestors being what they are presently allowed to do to others, not their values or how they would want society to be structured.
posted by eviemath at 1:02 PM on September 12, 2023 [1 favorite]

It Can Happen Here - In recent legislation in her home state of Florida, Edwidge Danticat hears echoes of the oppressive regimes in Haiti that her family fled.
posted by Artw at 1:06 PM on September 12, 2023 [12 favorites]

I used to think it was motivated by guilt but now I think they are incapable of feeling guilt. Rather, this is motivated by anger that anyone would suggest that they should feel guilty for continuing to be racist.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 1:13 PM on September 12, 2023 [12 favorites]

The kids who go through this kind of "education" will be fit to work in mines, gas chambers or Republican constituency offices and not much else.
posted by klanawa at 1:24 PM on September 12, 2023 [4 favorites]

Anyone have a working link to the actual content? I'm not going to browse a crippled web version of a PDF where moving to the next page is painful
posted by caution live frogs at 1:40 PM on September 12, 2023

As loathsome as Prager U and it's associated movements and organizations are, I can't help but be impressed with it as a well produced, comprehensive, integrated education propaganda project, which is well designed to seem superficially reasonable to people who aren't primed to be skeptical of their claims. They even make a reasonable good-faith effort to create coherent arguments for their point of view.

I wish we had something similar on the left side of the political spectrum. I think such a thing would be even more effective since racism, climate change, and authoritarianism are real.
posted by Reverend John at 1:48 PM on September 12, 2023 [8 favorites]

"But in reality, they were only upset that they weren't the ones doing the indoctrinating! "

They are expert deflectors and projectors.
posted by symbioid at 1:49 PM on September 12, 2023 [1 favorite]

Honestly, Prager U is basically Conservapedia done right.
posted by Reverend John at 1:50 PM on September 12, 2023 [1 favorite]

A particularly sad thing is Gravel Institute was a nice counter to PragerU, but seems to have fallen apart around a year ago. It's really sad, their videos had some decent star power behind them and were reasonably well made.
posted by JHarris at 1:53 PM on September 12, 2023 [4 favorites]

I wish we had something similar on the left side of the political spectrum. I think such a thing would be even more effective since racism, climate change, and authoritarianism are real.


Literally you do, it's just called schools, real ones with real textbooks and real teachers committed to the project of actual education.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 2:31 PM on September 12, 2023 [53 favorites]

Requires admitting that the opposite of this shit isn’t just “the left”, it’s all of reality.
posted by Artw at 2:39 PM on September 12, 2023 [21 favorites]

One possible and much more prolific reality-based analogue is Complexly (i.e. the Green bros. and all their collaborators: SciShow, Crash Course, etc.). Let us hope there is at least some delay before they are banned.
posted by Chef Flamboyardee at 3:12 PM on September 12, 2023 [2 favorites]

All this hard indoctrination work will go up in bong smoke the moment these kids meet their first attractive and cool lefty.
posted by srboisvert at 3:48 PM on September 12, 2023 [3 favorites]

I think the idea is to go cradle to grave without access to the outside world beyond the politically approved bubble.
posted by Artw at 4:02 PM on September 12, 2023 [6 favorites]

Hey, we have a teacher shortage, what's the best solution? Oh, we should drive more of them away then? Perfect!
posted by azpenguin at 4:06 PM on September 12, 2023

Hey, we have a teacher shortage, what's the best solution? Oh, we should drive more of them away then? Perfect!

I mean... it is perfect, it's exactly what they want, for the public school system to collapse utterly and leave them free to lock their kids away (conveniently pulling their wives out of the workforce) and fill them with garbage and fascism at home.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 4:15 PM on September 12, 2023 [27 favorites]

David Koresh is a hero to these folks.
posted by riverlife at 4:28 PM on September 12, 2023 [1 favorite]

*endless internal screaming*
posted by Wretch729 at 6:21 PM on September 12, 2023 [6 favorites]

Florida is on verge of allowing a right-wing alternative to the SAT

Psst, the answer is C, "Cultural Marxism."
posted by ActingTheGoat at 6:59 PM on September 12, 2023

...the worst thing is, I can even see the inspiration but they've managed to twist the power of historic mining unions in Poland and the right wing's courting of them, plus a tradition of coal heating in residential buildings, into a cultural thing. Which actually got quietly buried when first the Ostrołęka C project collapsed in early Covid (attempt to build a "clean" powerplant with government money) and then Russia's attack on Ukraine exposed the fact our coal production has been shrinking to the point all the coal for sale was really Russian. In the meantime the solar and heat pump boom took off to the point that in Pomorskie - the region I did most of my driving in last month - it's hard to find a house without solar panels, even the summer cottages have them like 30% of the time. Between climate change and Putin, Poland went 50% renewable directly opposed to government intervention since 2016.
posted by I claim sanctuary at 1:16 AM on September 13, 2023 [7 favorites]

“Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?”

― George W. Bush
posted by kirkaracha at 8:02 AM on September 13, 2023 [3 favorites]

Florida is on verge of allowing a right-wing alternative to the SAT

Last Friday - September 8, 2023 - the governing board of the state's public universities voted to begin accepting the Classical Learning Test beginning this fall.
posted by ElKevbo at 9:14 AM on September 13, 2023 [3 favorites]

I think the idea is to go cradle to grave without access to the outside world beyond the politically approved bubble.

Florida is becoming a cave
posted by JoeXIII007 at 10:47 AM on September 13, 2023 [2 favorites]

How PragerU Hurts Students (and Teachers) (Zoe Bee, YouTube/Piped, 29m31s; Patreon)
posted by flabdablet at 12:31 PM on September 13, 2023 [2 favorites]

I wish we had something similar on the left side of the political spectrum. I think such a thing would be even more effective since racism, climate change, and authoritarianism are real.

Literally you do, it's just called schools, real ones with real textbooks and real teachers committed to the project of actual education.

This. And CRT, and Critical Literacy, and everything Critical, and teachers that are actually prepared to teach. All of this coming from a teacher educator.
posted by Snowishberlin at 4:02 PM on September 17, 2023