Orange County Public Schools says No to PragerU Kids

Orange County Public Schools (OCPS) will not be utilizing the books, magazines and videos produced by conservative content creator PragerU Kids in its K-12 curriculum for the 2023-2024 school year, which starts Aug. 10.

“The district is not seeking additional supplemental materials as our newly adopted materials meet the state standards,” said OCPS spokesperson Michael Ollendorf in an email today to VoxPopuli. “PragerU is a state-approved supplemental resource for instruction, it is not required by the Florida Department of Education. OCPS has not incorporated PragerU content into the curriculum resources provided to our instructional staff.”

PragerU, which is not a real university or any kind of accredited educational institution, describes itself as “the leading hub for pro-American content online.”

Founded by conservative talk show host Dennis Prager — and funded in part by billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and the Wilks brothers Dan and Farris of Texas who earned their fortune fracking — the site makes no secret of its mission to offer conservative counter-programming to what it says are the “radical activism” and “woke agendas … infiltrating classrooms, culture and social media.”

For instance, here’s how PragerU addresses the topic of slavery, which the new Florida Education standards suggest provided some personal “benefit” to the enslaved.

A video “A short history on slavery” is narrated by Candace Owens and emphasizes that Black “lives had very little value to our ancestors” who sold them into slavery for “items as trivial as gin and mirrors,” while “white people were the first to formally put an end to slavery.” This “history” omits any mention of Southern slavery’s separation of families; rape of women and girls; whippings and torture;  experimental surgeries on enslaved women without anesthesia while J. Marion Sims developed modern gynecological techniques and procedures in the 1840s.

Florida is the first state to approvePragerU materials for K-12 classrooms.