Right-Wing Propaganda Pipeline From YouTube To the Classroom
The Success of PragerU Threatens the Credibility of American Education (Five Minutes At A Time)
Have you seen a PragerU Kids animation “educational” video where an older Frederick Douglass character tells two time-traveling children that although he disapproved of slavery, the Founding Fathers prioritized unity, suggesting compromise was necessary. He also calls the U.S. Constitution a “glorious liberty document” and encourages faith in the system.
PragerU cherry picks quotes from Douglass to water down his anti-slavery positions. They use an excerpt from Douglass’s famous 1852 Fourth of July speech, but omit his central critique: “This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. … You may rejoice, I must mourn.”
Andrew Hartman (Illinois State University) called the portrayal “appalling,” and Princeton historian Kevin Kruse warned, “There’s a constant effort to spin atrocities in the past as not so bad.”
Then there is the A Short History of Slavery video (hosted by Candace Owens), where PragerU emphasizes that slavery didn’t begin in 1492 or 1619, isn’t a uniquely white phenomenon, and implies that America was among the first nations to initiate the conversation to end slavery.
While it’s accurate that slavery predates European colonization and exists across cultures, PragerU overlooks that the U.S. was not a leader in abolition and overlooks the uniquely racialized nature of American chattel enslavement. The history of slavery is global, but the U.S. context is deeply racialized and constitutionally protected, and that was distinctive. PragerU’s framing downplays the U.S. role and the moral urgency of abolition movements.
Then there is the children’s video Fossil Fuels: The Greenest Energy. PragerU correlates fossil fuel usage with improved access to clean water, implying a causal relationship. This is a classic false cause fallacy; it does not account for pollution from coal mining, fracking, and oil spills, all of which contaminate water. Environmental scientists emphasize that fossil fuels have driven pollution, climate degradation, and habitat destruction, not ecological progress.
Lately, you may have seen an outcry about PragerU’s Columbus video, in which two children—Leo and his older sister, Lea—travel back in time to talk to Christopher Columbus. They tell him he has become a controversial figure 500 years after he lived, and one of the kids asks him about slavery.
Columbus says,
“Slavery is as old as time, and has taken place in every corner of the world—even among the people I just left. Being taken as an enslaved person is better than being killed, no? I don’t see the problem.”
After they visit the past, the kids return to the present day and summarize their encounter with the explorer.
Leo- “Maybe he wasn’t a hero, but he sure did some heroic things that are definitely worth celebrating.
Lea- “And a lot of the things we judge him for now were just normal in his time. You never know, Leo. Maybe some of the things we’re told are fine today will be considered evil or crazy in the future.”
What a lesson to teach kids. This is like saying, genocide was normal in Columbus’s day, so we really can’t judge him by our standards. Except genocide is still going on today…in Gaza, in Africa.
Not only that, but genocide was criticized in Columbus’ day by Bartolomé de Las Casas, known as the "Defender of the Indians," for his passionate advocacy of the rights of Indigenous peoples during the Spanish colonization of the Americas. A former conquistador turned Dominican friar, he documented and condemned the atrocities committed by Spanish settlers. Normal for that day? Not everyone thought so.
When most people hear Prager University, they assume it’s a legitimate educational institution. However, despite the academic-sounding name, PragerU is not a university. There is no brick-and-mortar building that houses a University named after Prager. It is a YouTube channel…that’s it. It’s a conservative media company that produces slick, five-minute videos designed to reshape public opinion on history, politics, and culture—especially among young people.
Furthermore, Dennis Prager, the founder of PragerU, is not a historian. He founded PragerU in 2009 when Prager was a conservative talk radio host, along with screenwriter Allen Estrin. Their mission was clear: to counter what they perceived as “left-wing dominance” in schools and media. Rather than focusing on long-form lectures, PragerU condensed ideas into short, easily digestible animated videos—perfect for the YouTube era and Donald Trump’s short attention span. It is an ideal platform to present oversimplified and inaccurate history. It is nothing more than right-wing propaganda.
Though it claims to be a “non-profit,” PragerU has received millions from influential conservative donors, including the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Wilks family (Texas fracking billionaires), and the Daily Wire’s network of aligned interests. IRS filings show that in 2020 alone, PragerU raised over $50 million—a massive budget for online videos.
PragerU videos cover everything from “Why Socialism Fails” to “Was Slavery Unique to America?” They often feature high-profile conservative figures like Ben Shapiro, Candace Owens, and Jordan Peterson. Their content distorts history: minimizing systemic racism, downplaying climate change, and presenting America as beyond reproach.
Historians have repeatedly fact-checked PragerU videos, finding oversimplifications, cherry-picked data, and outright falsehoods. Yet with animated graphics and confident narration, the videos are packaged to feel authoritative. They are deliberately targeting the next generation of young people.
PragerU has aggressively targeted school systems. In recent years, it launched PragerU Kids, producing cartoons like Leo & Layla, which introduce children to figures such as Christopher Columbus and Ronald Reagan in glowing, revisionist portrayals. In 2023, Florida approved PragerU Kids content for use in public schools, sparking national outrage among educators.
Unfortunately, digital analytics show their strategy works: PragerU boasts over 3.5 billion views across platforms, with a large percentage of their audience under 35. They’ve essentially built a pipeline from YouTube to the classroom. It is propaganda by design.
“It’s not education—it’s indoctrination wrapped in the language of freedom and patriotism,” says Samuel Abrams, a political scientist at Sarah Lawrence College. The simplicity of the videos, combined with high production values, allows complex issues to be reduced to a black-and-white worldview: capitalism good, progressivism flawed.
PragerU materials are used in at least five states where education officials have approved their use, including Florida, Oklahoma, Montana, New Hampshire, and Arizona. The number of states using the materials can vary as states may approve them for different purposes, such as civics or financial literacy, and additional states may be considering their adoption.
Florida became the first state to announce PragerU Kids as aligned with civics standards; however, educators have pushed back against the perceived indoctrination of the content. At least five Northeast Florida districts (Baker, Clay, Duval, Putnam, St. Johns) explicitly told their staff that PragerU is not approved. Clay County, Florida, schools have issued a policy stating, “All supplemental materials not part of a district-adopted curriculum must be approved by the school-based curriculum council.” Duval County is similar: “The district is not using PragerU, nor is it supported in our curriculum.”
In Oklahoma, after the white Christian Nationalist State Superintendent Ryan Walters announced a partnership with PragerU, multiple districts said they wouldn’t use the content:
Oklahoma City: “The endorsement… doesn’t change anything we are doing in the classroom. We trust our teachers… We believe that our teachers are the experts.”
Tulsa: “We have not reviewed PragerU as a curricular resource and have no plans to alter the curricular selection process…”
Mustang: “No resources from PragerU are included.” (Similar statements came from Moore, Yukon, Edmond, Putnam City, Norman.)
At Maumee High School in Ohio, in 2020, a history class offered extra credit for a PragerU video. After complaints, the district said it “does not promote PragerU materials,” removed the assignment, and “is reviewing” the situation.
Finally, just this fall, the state of Oklahoma, which is last in the nation in educational effectiveness, is using a 34-question survey for new teachers moving into the state from “woke” states like New York or California. You can take the test yourself here. As you can imagine, the test is slanted so far to the right that you nearly fall off your chair in that direction. And in good nonprofit fashion, the completion screen for the test also prompts the person taking the test with multiple requests to donate to PragerU as either a one-time or a monthly donation.
The rise of PragerU illustrates a broader shift in the right-wing media ecosystem: bypassing traditional journalism and academia to speak directly to audiences through entertainment. It also raises questions about transparency—should groups with overt political agendas be allowed to masquerade as “educational” platforms in public schools?
Arizona Education Association president Marisol Garcia calls the materials “hyper-partisan to the point of propaganda, inaccurate, and incredibly substandard.” Princeton historian Kevin Kruse commented, “There’s a constant effort to spin atrocities in the past as not so bad,” in reference to videos minimizing slavery’s brutality.
But PragerU’s right-wing, whitewashed version of history is a perfect fit for Trump’s attempts to counter solid, scholarly historical narratives. In June 2025, the White House partnered with PragerU, and the US Department of Education to launch The Founders Museum. The history exhibit is located in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, adjacent to the White House.
The museum includes 82 paintings of historical figures and key events from America's founding. It also features over 40 AI-generated video shorts produced by PragerU, which feature historical figures such as Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. Following its unveiling, PragerU announced plans to take The Founders Museum on the road with mobile museum trucks.
Unfortunately, the historical accuracy of the AI-generated historical figures is questionable at best. The AI-generated figures in the videos use quotes that cannot be historically verified. The exhibit's narrow focus and omission of marginalized voices and more complete accounts of history, including the legacy of slavery, make the exhibit about the great white men of history.
Here is an example. The AI videos can blur the line between reality and fiction. In one video, an artificially generated John Adams says, "Facts do not care about your feelings” a phrase often used by conservative commentator and PragerU presenter Ben Shapiro. There is no evidence that Adams said this.
Brendan Gillis, director of teaching and learning for the American Historical Association, commented about the exhibit: "I have real concerns about the extent to which they weave together words that are preserved in primary sources from historical figures with other sorts of commentary. And it's not always clear [when] the historical figures actually said the words that are coming out of their mouth, or wrote them down, and when this is the work of whoever scripted them."
For now, PragerU’s influence continues to grow. In a polarized nation, the battle over history, truth, and education is increasingly being fought not in classrooms, but online—five minutes at a time.
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Great job exposing PragerU crap. the fact is this is supported by the Trump administration and being in coordination with the White House. Kids being taught this are going need re-education over time. It will get much worse.
Please go to http://Change.org and sign to remove this horrible man, Ryan Walters. You do not have to live in Oklahoma to sign. If his vile, right-wing nonsense can happen here it will be tried elsewhere in time.