An Ohio public school has been giving students extra credit for watching videos from PragerU, a right-wing website that produces clips of talking heads such as Candace Owens and Ben Shapiro discussing conservative viewpoints, HuffPost has learned.
The PragerU videos — with titles such as “Build the Wall,” “Why the Right Was Right” and “The Left Ruins Everything” — were assigned to a 10th-grade history class at Maumee High School, along with a series of questions about the videos’ “most important messages.”
The assignment came at the same time that the website has tried to gain further influence in K-12 classrooms. Earlier this month, the organization launched a program directly aimed at parents and educators, complete with study guides with sections such as “Conservatives Are the Real Environmentalists” and “The Ferguson Lie,” based on a HuffPost review of the materials.
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The homework assignment appeared unrelated to PragerU’s latest venture, called PragerU Educators and Parents, or PREP, which launched several weeks ago. The inception of such a program suggested that these types of assignments may become more prevalent in schools.
Already, “2,000 parents and educators have already signed up for PREP,” Craig Strazzeri, chief marketing officer of PragerU, said in an email to HuffPost.
“We constantly hear from educators and teachers who use our videos in the classroom,” Strazzeri said. He declined to disclose how many public school teachers specifically joined the new program. “Ideally, every school in America would show PragerU videos in the classroom on a regular basis to help educate the next generation.
”PragerU started the PREP program in response to COVID-19-related school shutdowns, which “forced us to take a closer look at what is being taught and not taught across the country,” said Adrienne Johnson, PragerU’s chief of staff and lead of the PREP platform, in a video interview with conservative news channel One America News Network. “America is not being fairly portrayed.
If your teacher seriously assigns you a PragerU video please dunk of their ass so hard
Hi, social studies teacher here: if your teacher assigns you one of these videos in any context except for the following, drag them to hell. Call your principal, sure, but also. Ruin them on twitter. Make it a big public stink the whole district has to scramble to hush up. Complain to your local news if you have to. Complain to the ACLU– they have a whooooole department on education. Make that teacher a liability to the school. See how fast their shit changes.
Now, exceptions include:
- you are studying propaganda and these videos are an example of such
- you are studying conservatism (alone or as compared to other ideology) and the videos are a case study in alt right thought
- you’re studying things like media literacy and critical media consumption and this is one of the examples you have to deconstruct
- you’re making comparisons between the message of the videos and other messages in history and whether they’re coming from the same root
- basically ask “am I being given this video to inform me or have I been given this video to analyze?” and if the answer is inform, as in your teacher is using this shit as part of introducing new info, FUCK that. Drag them to hell. This shit cannot be used as direct instruction. But if the answer is “critically analyze the video” or “the video is an example of something really happening that we are learning about” then that’s actually very useful to you to learn because it will help you identify this thinking when you see it and understand how conservatives you’re up against are coming to their conclusions.
Basically, videos like this are only good for studying the alt right like the wacked out, neurotic, inbred lab rats that they are at heart. Teachers trying to use them as factual direct instruction need to get as fucked as possible as soon as possible.
Don’t forget, public school teachers are *~*strictly prohibited*~* from anything that might be deemed political indoctrination. If your teacher tries to use PragerU as a legitimate, credible source that you should parrot all your opinions from, DRAG. THEM. AND. THE. DISTRICT. THROUGH. THE. MUD.
i wholeheartedly support anyone who, should their school do this or they find out of any other school that does, decides to drag any offending staff into the attention of any and all ethics boards and courts that apply
therye already facing some legal action and im in favor of them having to face more, as many as possible, preferably untill their wallet bleeds to death
because theyre VERY open about saying greed is good and should be as unregulated as possible, college education ‘reduces diversity’ by teaching people to consider cultures outside their own, is openly islamiphobic and claims thats the only way to be logical and free thinking is to hate muslums and keep overtly racist depictions of all minorities in all media, is openly in favor of fascism not even hiding it as patriotism just openly trying to say nationalism is good, and says that yes cops should be gunning down brown people for being ‘suspicious’
its that blend of propaganda brainrot while being an open fraud because its masquerading as an educational medium while pulling ‘facts’ out of its ass in the most shameless and blatant ways possible
thinking about my optometrist who was treating my eye infection and said “if it hurts, you can rinse your eye with boiled water. look at me - look at me. i want you to understand that i mean water that has been boiled and has since cooled down. not boiling water. do you understand?” like i’m so grateful for this man ensuring that I wouldn’t destroy my eyes by pouring boiling water in it, because it is an adequate assessment of my intelligence
I remember in my Arabic class we were going over the alphabet and the teacher was like there’s no ‘P’ etc and this white girl was like wait what but my names Paige and my teacher was like lol then we’d pronounce it as beige and she was so offended I’m crying thinking about it
One of my mom’s friends, Hugh, went to France and they had a lot of trouble pronouncing his name because the entire thing was silent.
salut je m'appelle [REDACTED]
lol when I lived in France my host family had a friend names Hugh. We saw him and his family a lot.
They pronounced it “oog” and I didn’t know until the day before I left France that his name was Hugh. I just thought he had some weird caveman nickname 😭
that is hands down the funniest addition to this post
“Deleted my weather app because there’s a guy in my office that always tells me anyway and the app never asks me how my weekend was. Shout out Bill, my weekend was awesome man thanks for asking.”
hi I actually just got this keychainfor my boyfriend because hes a huge fan of avengers!! it’s not only timely (because of endgame) but its also simple and cute and I like that he can bring it with him anywhere and always remember me