Is PragerU a Danger to Your Children? The Left Certainly Thinks So

Dennis Prager, founder of PragerU and conservative radio talk show host and writer speaks at the Values Voter Summit in Washington on Oct. 11, 2019. Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times

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Since Florida, Texas, Oklahoma, New Hampshire, Montana, and Arizona announced that PragerU material could be shown to their students, virtually every major publication in the country from The New York Times to the Los Angeles Times, from Rolling Stone to Vanity Fair, plus local newspapers in the states just listed have condemned PragerU.

Are their condemnations valid? Well, that depends.

If your educational objective is to convince students that U.S. history is something they should be ashamed of, then the answer is yes. And that, of course, is the left’s objective.

If your educational objective is to convince students that U.S. history is something they should be proud of, then the answer is no. And that is PragerU’s objective.

The left has its agenda. We have ours. We accept that. We stand for everything they oppose.

But we do have a few questions.

Given the left’s utter dominance of the educational system, why would showing a few five-minute PragerU videos get them so riled up? Why don’t they just shrug us off, especially because teachers aren’t required to show the videos? How could a few PragerU videos do as much damage as they claim?

No one who has written about this controversy has asked these questions, let alone tried to answer them. So let me do so now.

Any material that contradicts the left’s narrative cannot be permitted. Everything depends on that rule. And why is that? Because their arguments don’t stand up to scrutiny, even five minutes worth.

Their hold on our children’s minds is that fragile. And they know it.

Since we began PragerU, we have said that watching just one of our videos could turn around a curious young mind. Even though we have lots of evidence to back this up, it was us saying it. Now the left is saying it!

Don’t let PragerU videos into the classroom, they say, because students might start (gasp!) loving the United States instead of hating it. And besides, they say, PragerU‘s version of U.S. history is not true. It’s all made up.

Despite having produced more than 500 five-minute videos on everything from history to physical fitness and dozens of PragerU Kids videos, we are mostly attacked for a couple of videos in our Leo and Layla time travel series. In one adventure, these animated siblings visit abolitionist Frederick Douglass. According to our detractors, we put words in the great man’s mouth that he didn’t say or believe. Keep in mind that Leo and Layla videos are made for children from ages 10 to 12, not doctoral candidates. Do we paraphrase? Of course, we do. We have to. The real issue is, are we fairly depicting Douglass’s views?

Here’s an exchange we have been criticized for:

Layla: “So, you are trying to work for change inside of the American system?”

Douglass: “Precisely, Layla. Our system is wonderful, and ‘The Constitution is a glorious liberty document!’ We just need to convince enough Americans to be true to it.”

The phrase “The Constitution is a glorious liberty document” is taken verbatim from Douglass’s famous 1852 Fourth of July speech, one of the greatest speeches in U.S. history. It should be required reading for every U.S. high school student. Douglass had experienced the worst excesses of slavery personally; he hated the institution with every fiber in his body. But it’s also true that he was practical enough to know that he had to work within the system to abolish it. That’s why he joined the Republican Party and why he encouraged free blacks to join the Union Army. Like Martin Luther King Jr., whom he inspired, Douglass wanted Americans to live up to their Constitution. If they did that, then slavery would vanish and blacks would be given the rights that they deserve—the rights that all Americans deserve.

We don’t downplay the evils of slavery, as we’ve been accused of doing. We did our homework; our opponents didn’t. We offer age-appropriate context, something that is sorely lacking in the contemporary teaching of history. This point is also made in our five-minute video of Douglass. It’s presented by Timothy Sandefur, a Douglass scholar and biographer.

It’s not PragerU who is distorting the truth. It’s the left. What bothers the left is that we don’t depict the United States as a racist dystopia.

There are other assertions made against PragerU more broadly. That our videos are sexist, transphobic, xenophobic, and so on—the usual list of leftist horribles. Since we’re conservative or “ultra conservative,” according to The Daily Beast, ipso facto we must be wrong. But they almost never give examples to back up their insults. And if they do give an example, it’s usually untrue, as when they say we uphold the “lost cause” version of the Civil War (we don’t).

So are we a threat to America’s youth?

There’s an easy way to answer the question. Go to PragerU.com and make up your own mind. The education we offer is free ... and priceless.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.