đź“ŤTEXAS
— Marissa Streit (@streitmarissa) August 21, 2023
Texas is the latest state to welcome our PragerU Kids educational initiative into their schools.
Visit https://t.co/U1y33ml7Sj to sign the petition to get @PragerU into classrooms across the country. @Julie4TX pic.twitter.com/E2bvNR01lr
PragerU, a debunked right wing group started by conservative Dennis Prager, is going to be providing teaching content in Florida and, now, Texas, announced PragerU CEO Marissa Streit on Twitter.
PragerU is not an academic institution and does not hold classes, does not grant certifications or diplomas, and is not accredited by any recognized body. Media Matters reported that PragerU distorts history:
Media Matters reviewed the right-wing propaganda Florida recently approved for use in public schools, including lessons that celebrate colonialism, downplay the harms of slavery, and analogize climate denialism to the Warsaw Uprising.
Health Feedback reported that PragerU falsely claimed “0nly 6% of COVID-19 deaths were caused by COVID-19 alone”; only 0.056% of the U.S. population has died from COVID-19“:
It is false to say only 6% of COVID-19 deaths were due to COVID-19 alone. This claim is based on a misunderstanding of how deaths are certified. Physicians distinguish between people who died of COVID-19 and those who died of their preexisting conditions depending on signs and symptoms of their illness. Deaths are classified as COVID-19 only if the clinical course of their decline is compatible with COVID-19.
TIME also notes how PragerU claims have been debunked:
PragerU has published videos questioning the scientific consensus on the extent of fossil fuels’ contribution to climate change. Historian Kevin Kruse went viral on Twitter for fact-checking a PragerU video about why the South predominantly votes Republican (PragerU argued the racism that once defined the South “doesn’t anymore”), accusing it of “cherry-picking” info.
“It’s very important to recognize that these are not educational videos,”says Francesca Tripodi, a sociologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who found during 2017 research that college students raved about PragerU’s trustworthiness as an academic source. “These videos are very explicitly created to get people to think a certain way… And the goal of PragerU is to advance a conservative agenda.”
…When TIME asked (PragerU CEO Marissa) Streit why the video teaches kids that arguing with scientific consensus is the same as fighting oppression, Streit said: “This concept that all scientists agree on something is an unscientific claim, because science is about constant discovery and wrestling with innovation and ideas.
There is another narrative that scientists are trying to share, except that they’re not allowed to do it because they’re being bullied out of the conversation.” (97% of actively publishing scientists agree that humans are causing climate change, according to NASA.)
(Sources: Marissa Streit/Twitter, TIME, Health Feedback, Media Matters)