Florida Approved Hyper-Conservative PragerU Curricula for Public Schools

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and the state’s legislative Republican supermajority approved the use of ultra-conservative and factually incorrect PragerU materials for use in public schools. They include videos that downplay the destruction of Native communities, question climate change, and defend the practice of slavery.

PragerU is a nonprofit organization that creates educational material as an explicit “alternative to the dominant left-wing ideology in culture, media, and education,” according to its founder, conservative radio host Dennis Prager. Its videos call feminism a “mean-spirited, small minded, and oppressive philosophy,” while its piece on the European colonization of North America states that no land belongs to one group of people forever and asks, “who wants to talk about” the morality of conquest?

One of PragerU’s most infamous videos depicts a cartoon caricature of famed abolitionist Fredrick Douglass excusing the Founding Fathers’ support of slavery because they were trying to “achieve something great.” During his lifetime, Douglass was adamantly opposed to compromising on the full emancipation of enslaved people.

Between 2020 and 2023, PragerU’s annual revenue almost doubled from $36 million to $68.7 million. It is largely funded by 350,000 donors, including major givers such as the conservative Bradley Foundation, the National Christian Foundation, and Texas oil billionaires Dan and Farris Wilks—each of which has donated more than one million dollars apiece.

PragerU’s curricula have been approved for public instruction in six states, including Arizona, Florida, Louisiana, Montana, New Hampshire, and Oklahoma, potentially indoctrinating millions of public school students with erroneous, hyper-conservative talking points—just as PragerU’s founders, its donors, and participating states’ Republican parties intended.