PragerU Kids: The push for far-right ideological indoctrination

• In Event: Bias, Politics, and Criminology Education

Abstract

In the summer of 2023, Florida governor Ron Desantis successfully pushed the “educational materials” of the conservative Prager University (PragerU) Kids materials into school curricula while at nearly the same time, Florida School Boards made sweeping restrictions on diversity and inclusion programs (NPR, 2023). As the authors concluded in their 2022 article, PragerU is a non-credited, pseudo university that espouses right-wing ideologies that overlap with far-right groups. The concern, then, is that PragerU Kids materials are espousing the same ideologies to vulnerable, impressionable children, ultimately leading to a potential growth in future right wing extremism. As Dennis Prager states himself, PragerU is set on indoctrinating children, which is particularly virulent with the backing of regional school boards (NPR 2023a). This content analysis of the school board approved PragerU Kids videos on PragerU’s primary platform, YouTube, found that the kids materials reflect similar extremist themes found in their original research of the parent materials, including strong themes of Judeo-Christian nationalism, white western ethnocentrism and superiority, neoliberalism, and anti-leftism, to name a few. The success of their videos and perception of legitimacy is discussed as to stem from their rhetorical devices, framing, and production quality.

Authors

• Adrienne L. McCarthy, Kansas State University

• Christopher Glenn Brewer, Illinois State University