Yup, I couldn't imagine trying to make my students watch a twenty-seven minute video. The chaos they would devolve into. Also, what if admin walks in? I don't think they'd be amused by my lesson for the day being showing a video for over half the class. The one where you tell students "we're going to play a game!" and then make them watch a video of someone else playing a game would cause a revolt.
Native Texan here: What happened is that a single State Board of Education member announced that PragerU was coming to classrooms. Immediately afterwards, the rest of the Board of Education leadership said she went rogue, and that there were no plans now or in the immediate future to let public school teachers use it, and that the company hadn't even submitted educational materials to the state for review. So PragerU is staying out of Texas classrooms. For now.
The fact they got people like Ben Shapiro in there is insane. He is not a licensed teacher but a political icon. They just put their own guys from the Prager U corporation into their own lesson plans. It’s like if Elon musk personally gave a lesson about the uses of cars, and ONLY showed Tesla cars in the examples and then proceeded to advertise space X. Then giving them a worksheet on the benefits of buying Tesla stock.
Well, they don't care if the people they support in office have a law degree or even understand the law, so it's not a stretch for them to have the same kind of people as 'teachers.'
@@megamangos7408 And it's even less of a stretch for Dennis Prager to have such people as "students" given the tripe presented in the regular "Prager U" videos. Indeed, Dennis Prager wants people who are completely incompetent and lacking the ability to think and reason for themselves working death-dealing hours in all fields for little-or even no-pay. These lesson plans, falsely so-called, are simply his latest step to achieve that aim.
“What colors is the Statue of Liberty?” Could be a good question to lead into a chemistry lesson, but it’s pretty clear that’s not what’s happening here,
Haha I thought the same thing. When she said it, I quickly started scanning the page, to see if it added anything about why its those colors! But nope, I think it was the shortest one. Missed opportunity. But then I started thinking maybe they have to stick to there subject. But I would have to add it, if I were the teacher. I had a teacher that always added a unique fact about our subject for the day. Mr. Brown 7th grade science teacher, annnnnddddd that might be the only teacher I can remember name grade and subject from K-12. Kinda embarrassing….
It just becomes more apparent when you see it decades later, as an adult. The US education system is dismal, & saturated with propaganda. It's very cult-like.
@@realdragonI'm sure there is a lot to appreciate about German history but obviously not everything. Keep in mind Germany is like 10 times older than the usa
I went to a Christian private school for 7th and 8th grade that used PragerU textbooks. You would have had an aneurysm if you read the part where they said child labor wasn't really that bad of a thing during the Industrial Revolution.
@ultravoid5398 Actually, they do, specifically to think deeper about what caused people to immigrate, what happened after they immigrated, challenges or barriers to immigration, whether or not the info you've received is biased, the list goes on and on and on.
"This lesson is for 6th graders." If any teacher presented that lesson to 6th graders, they'd be ripped to shreds for treating their students like idiots, BY their students.
@@aralornwolf3140 In my experience, there's at least that ONE kid who genuinely doesn't give a **** and will say what everyone is already thinking, it may be the kid that always gets detention, but it's the natural order, if something is stupid, kids will call it out QUICK, at ALL ages.
you mean to tell me they’re more interested in indoctrinating kids with a certain political view than actually giving them a good education like they say they do??
Sick projection. Government schooling is literal indoctrination, by definition. The Prussian model was invented by a dictator in order to create obedient soldiers and factory drones.
@@br1ghts0ng i think you meant teaching shouldn't be involved in the larger political attitudes but this would still be impossible to implement because everything is technically politics. the way you teach, what you teach and who you teach are all internal policies that each teacher upholds.
Nah bro you gotta change 8:10 to jump scare cat, cause this is my first video and when the cat appears I just went “WOAH! Hold up! When tf did el Gato Grande get there???” And then I backed up the video to see if I’m stupid or not.
Zoe's cat being her her emotional support as she grows increasingly frustrated with PraegerU's failures of lesson plans is the love we want to see in this world.
Zoe, how dare you suggest that kids should think critically in the classroom? What if they discover that we’re teaching them false biased information. We can’t let that happen
Like, I say what you will about John and Hank Green, but at least Crash Course encourages kids to think critically and actually has effort put into it.
Exactly, Zoe trying to "fix" these lesson plans misses the point. They weren't made to teach kids, they were made to indoctrinate and to prevent any critical thinking.
@@conorford7852 you should teach them better. My 4 year olds can watch movies from start to finish since they were three with no issues. Sounds like a parenting diff.
@PolitikPolitik-fh2qc Kids are wired differently and it's not a matter of teaching differently. My brother and I didn't have that problem when we were little, and we didn't need any coaching to sit still and watch movies or to listen for story time. That she has trouble getting to sleep every night, even when there's no naptime, means that there's a chance that she has ADHD. For most kids it's too early to tell for sure, but it's something we're keeping an eye out for. Either way, point stands. Edutainment videos typically suck and almost never keep a kids focus, especially not for that long.
@@conorford7852 I mean I mostly said that because both of you implied it happened to all kids. My son is autistic so he has his moments close to adhd. But it's all about how to handle them. My family has a ton of kids. And has a pretty wide range. But if you treat them right and teach them properly. Most can contain that energy. It also helps to have an outlet for that energy regularly. I think videos in education suck a lot. Whether right or left. But there's another point that some probably learn better from them. I wouldn't and don't. But I most likely didn't fit the mold. When in school I would have learned best if everything was taught by applicable methods. But thats probably unreasonable for many subjects and not suitable for everyone for the cost.
I think it depends on what their watching because when I was in kindergarten we watched videos all the time and most of the time most of us sat and watched the video quietly.
@@squiddler7731I am also a left leaning Texan. I'm very hurt to see a very beautiful state turn sour just because of these bad apples who are in power. It also hurts because it's made a rift in my family. I used to get along with my family so well but after the pandemic I feel like I lost a part of them because everyone is on opposite sides and everything is political
That doesn't matter, if all Ur taught is "how great America is and that the entire world is inspired by it and wants to move there" (which we're not U guys are synonymous with Guns, poor public infrastructure and far right politics) then even if patriotism seems frustrating, that just scares you into questioning it more bc if this is the best we have to offer and it's just about survive able god forbid we try anything different.
Yeah. I always get angry when people insist on that stuff, because some people do. Like, sure, that’s the *first* step… but then you have to actually do things. You also are supposed to redescribe things later to reflect what you actually did instead of what you originally planned if it’s not the same.
I think part of the problem is that these lessons aren't actually developed for use in public schools. The politics of Prager are also behind the structural problems in their lessons. This flavor of conservative doesn't even believe in public schools. These lessons are designed for conservative homeschool parents and to entice conservative public school parents into homeschooling. They are designed to be done with little materials, not needing a large group of kids, and no expertise on the part of the "teacher". Putting this into the public school only serves to further that agenda. Whether conservative parents decide to pull their kids to avoid the social influence of the public school, or the liberal parents pull their kids to avoid this garbage curriculum, either way, their objective is met.
@@troublecloud1487its called the Dumbing Down of American workers and the Reichwing has been orgasming about it for 40 yrs because its what the Oligarchy WANTS
Young kids can think deeply? Hmm… that explains why Avatar is one of the highest rated tv shows ever and that’s all about how genocide, fascism, authoritarianism, and the like, is bad
In my own journey to turn away from Right-Wing Extremism, i rewatched ATLA. I loved the show, but the messages didn’t really come across when i was 11. Glad I took the time to rewatch
As someone who’s technically still a kid, most of us can actually have opinions and feelings about complicated topics. Shocker, I know. Also, Avatar is one of the best shows of all time.
As a Florida resident, it does not surprise me in the slightest that Florida would consider PragerU a perfectly acceptable form of education. Please help us.
come, join us in canada. it is only slightly better in terms of education. atlest in bc, BC hydro funds lots of the stuff in the material, and just advertises there products. when they talk about energy generation they only talk about, water and wind (there biggest money makers), they push down nuclear (pros: safe, clean, cool af, need degree to mine the materials so no underpaid workers. cons: hard to transport materials, costly) and solor. they also have a complete monopoly in the energy generation in BC
I can't help but think about how passive all of these lesson plans are. Like, kids of any age enjoy playing around or thinking about complicated things. All of these lesson plans are just being sat in front of a screen and repeating the information you're told. No new ideas will come from these lessons, I imagine kids will be largely bored out of their minds.
I'm sure "no new ideas" and "repeating the information you're told" is exactly what they want out of these lessons. Can't have people thinking critically now, can we?
Honestly I see it as a win. What conservatives don’t understand is human brains aren’t computers. When human brains get bored, they don’t just go along with their programming regardless, they rebel. I imagine the generations suffering through this new wave of alt right education will be even *more* rebellious than the ones before them, and it’ll be a joy to see. It would be amazing to watch all the conservative media outlets collectively scratch their heads in utter confusion when the students they’ve been trying to indoctrinate refuse to retain any of the information they try to force into their skulls.
Conformity to their ideals is all they care about, even if their ideas are ridiculous, false and exploitive, they have never cared about what happens to kids after they are born. All about controlling their minds.
You DON'T have to Treet it like a valid source of education. If anyone tries to push that on you, simply have examples at the ready and don't give them an inch
I don't give a fuck what so-called "laws" in Florida are. Teachers in Florida have the absolute legal right to not teach pragerU shit and have the absolute freedom of speech to teach truth. And Americans have the absolute freedom of speech right to be Communists and promote Communism and to be Anarchists and to promote Anarchy and to be Separatists and promote Separatism (breaking the country apart) and to be Animal Rights Vegans and to promote Veganism and to be Atheists and to spread Atheism and to be pro-worker unions and to be Alien Believers and to spread UFOlogy.
Prageru becoming an educational vendor in fl and tx just means that educators are *allowed* to use their stuff, not that they have to. Still sucks tho, i can see a good bit of teachers actively using these sources
Their ideology isn't perfect but the promotion of open borders, cutting off children's penises and abortions all the way up to the moment of birth us definitely worse
I am glad to see this take. Looking at it from a teaching standard. Most people just attack the content, which is bad, but showing that the problem isn't just the content is important.
As someone with ADHD having to sit through these types of lessons, videos and having to answer the same questions three different times would have driven me bonkers.
Same. Lessons like this would have *killed* me. Shit, I had arguments and straight-up walked out of class when teachers didn’t explore the depths of certain subjects I happened to already know something about, at times. Kids may require education, but they are not stupid, and will absolutely see through the superficiality and lack of care displayed in these materials.
As someone without ADHD having to sit through these lessons and answer the same paper 3 times, would have driven me bonkers. Like I had a few teachers with this type of lesson plan and I remember arguing with them about how much of a waste of my time they were.
@@bgorg1 Yes, that is kind of how education works. What happens when you work with videos and pre-made lesson plans is that you don't adapt to the kids in front of you. Our responses mentioned we have ADHD -- which by definition means we don't quite learn like most people -- but we are also a significant part of the population, so lesson plans and educational materials do need to be able to respond to various needs.
The fact that PragerU materials aren't good for educational use is not unintentional. The "lesson" where a video and a worksheet based on it take up the entire class period is so that the "last few minutes of discussion" don't get into anything that could contravene the PragerU dogma. These materials are superficial and non-critical specifically because that organization does not want American kids thinking critically about history or the world around them. PragerU isn't just trying to make sure that kids hear their worldview, it's trying to make it the default and only "reasonable" worldview by stamping down on critical thinking in classrooms.
Even as an indoctrination tool, this fails epically because all these kids will do is associate Prauger U with being bored with class and avoid them in the future. Which is the complete opposite of what they want.
My chemsitry teacher had us watch Professor Dave Expalins and other chanels like his as a SUPPLIMENTARY MATERIAL OUTDIDE OF CLASS to help us better understand the material learned in class. I still watch Professor Dave sometimes because I don't associate his videos with frustration and time wasting. Kurzgesagt alop has amazing educational videos. I once found one of their videos when I was doing research for a simple English paper that required 2 non-written sources, and now Ive watched all of their videos. I don't think these videos will make kids want to learn more on their own like Professor Dave and Kurzgesagt do.
@@TedBilk You assume they'd be able to make something catchy and not the cringiest, fakest soulless corporate pop song with 0 choreography skills, which is mighty generous of you.
This is geared toward "teaching" kids WHAT to think rather than HOW to think, which I believe was the greatest harm done to me until the time came when I was "allowed" to stop attending church and Sunday school at age 18.
That’s what schools been in every single state since the beginning of the modern education system. She’s just blaming PragerU for it because it got accepted into one state.
@@USAFORBETTER Uhhh, I stayed after school in fourth grade to catch up on math, and spent two weeks in summer school to finish the bio labs I'd left incomplete. Don't tell me I didn't have the opportunity to learn HOW to think. I don't know what church you went to, but trust me, there was no expectation to figure anything out for myself or to "show my work" in Sunday school. PragerU is garbage indoctrination, and I truly hope you're better than that.
It's very unfortunate that such insufficient learning material is considered okay. Knowing myself as a child, at least, I certainly would not be interested. On a brighter note, it was a delight to see your cat. Please give them a kiss for me.
I remember when I was in middle school and was looking for more intelligent content on RUclips and I found Prager U. Even back then the videos were so bad and uninformative that I could not watch em even though I was much more sympathetic to right wing content than now.
@@otto_jk The first time I was introduced to PragerU was the War on Cars video, where they portray replacing parking with green spaces as bad, like directly animate parking transforming into green space, my opinion on them hasn't changed since then, side note, cat! :3
@@Nota-Skavenmy first thought was that they don't really say anything in the videos it's just vibes and posturing. I was like "Where are the studies? Why aren't you referencing studies?"
I have sat through numerous terribly boring lessons at my parents' church when I was 7 and 8, and I can say that they were just like PragerU's lessons. I learned NOTHING from them and gained no respect nor love for my parents' religion-- at the end of the day, it just felt like accidental indoctrination. They had no idea how to teach us children base knowledge to build off of, so when the lesson was over the only thing I learned was that "god is good, love him or else he'll be sad and you'll be deemed as unholy." And no offense to Christians at all, but MAN, this gave me no critical thinking, never gave me room to do anything but absorb information, and just gave me a bad view of Christianity that ultimately made me sick of it. That being said, all pragerU's stuff does is shovel nonsense into young people and make them hate schooling more than they likely already do.
God my step grandparents are trying to do that w my brothers, now they just think religion is boring because they try to sit them down for AN HOUR STRAIGHT to learn about God through online lessons 😐
That’s so strange, like, wouldn’t it be a bit better for the education system to teach everyone that we all have different belief systems rather than just “love god or your unholy”?
The thing is that these lesson plans aren't broken, the things you are picking up on are not a bug, they are a feature. PagerU and the Conservatives behind them want to have students who get their opinions from the talking heads on a TV screen and are unable to do more than superficially understand what they are being told to believe. They fear giving kids critical thinking skills because if kids can question what they are being told, then they will start to question their Betters and see through the propaganda that the Right wants to indoctrinate them with. Remember that the Right loves the uneducated because it allows them to use fear and manipulation to control them. These plans are designed to intentionally harm kids' educations.
It's funny how you're critical instead of constructive. And look at the rhetoric you're using. It's politically charged lmao. Maybe stop using this as a talking point to criticize "the right". Maybe be constructive instead of pushing your own agenda? Maybe the point is education so focus on education and not "the right"?
@@samuelhong4272 I don't have an agenda to push, I'm not American so the systematic destruction of the US Education system by the MAGA, PragerU, and its ilk has zero effect on me. As such I am just calling it as I see it from the outside, and that is that Republicans and Conservative groups have steadily been eroding any part of education that teaches kids to think for themselves or to explore views other than those "approved" by the American Rightwing. The so-called "Parent's Rights" movement is very clearly a "Rights for Parents that believe the right thing" movement as it totally ignores and runs roughshod over the rights of any parents that aren't of the Christian Nationalist viewpoint. People like Besty Devoss have attacked and damaged the Education system, and now the SCotUS is working on it too. Good luck having kids that reach international standards with the current gutting of any teaching that dares to step out of line with the Theology of the White Christian Nationalists.
@samuelhong4272 but this IS a politically charged discussion. Prager U is a right-wing institution. They are not a real university, they are not comprised of real teachers and educational experts. They are all right-wing politicians, debaters and spokespersons. We cannot discuss their implication into Floridian and Texan school curriculums without facing the fact that this is an explicitly right-wing institution masquerading as an educational one. That is utterly immoral on any side of the political spectrum. A right-wing political institution should not have a place in defining education, just as much as a left-wing institution shouldn't. This should all be down to actual educators and teachers, which Prager U are not. Ignoring the obvious attempt at indoctrination and the political motivations behind Prager U's decisions is ignoring the full conversation and the seriously concerning forces at play here.
Exactly. Dennis Prager and company are *not* stupid, as evidenced by how effective they've been at disseminating their ideology in a highly systematic and strategic fashion. So, the fact that these lesson plans are lazy, confusing, repetitive, boring, and age-inappropriate actually tells us something, and it's not just that the people doing it are just simple dumb-dumbs. I'd say that it at least communicates volumes about how the Right sees children, and how little respect it has for them as beings.
This is what the privatization of education looks like. Watch a video, do a worksheet, follow a script. That’s what it’ll be for 95% of students. They don’t want students to think or learn, just absorb propaganda.
Ok so where I live, if you're getting assistance from the government you have to fulfill certain obligations, like applying for 20 jobs a week, and undertaking "training courses", some of the courses were ok, but all to often you would be given a worksheet and then just have to copy whatever the trainer was saying for 6 hours. On several questions we were told, "because of a typo in the worksheet, do not read the question, just write this answer." Hardcore same vibes. (Edit, the companies which provided these "courses" were privatized and often shut down after a short time only for the exact same staff to show up in a "new" company.)
wait private schools are considered a bad thing maybe I just never saw it where I live because the government and government schools suck so private schools are the norm for middle class and international schools for higher classes
@@Tom-rd8dd Think "private school" as in real shitty homeschool programs, especially the ones that pop up in fundamentalist religions that are designed by soccer moms with 0 background in education, that don't actually bother to go seek out recommended coursework provided by a plethora of schools' websites or even their country's department of education where possible, usually for free. Not the prestigious schools that actively compete with each other for people's money and various grants and sponsorships, because THAT kind of private school is motivated to be hypercompetitive about the students' performance specifically because the better they are, the more money they get. (they're a whole other issue, mostly in corruption scandals and nepotism and bribery and tenured professors that really oughta be booted but aren't because tenure) You want to make more workers to make you rich, not smart people to compete with you for the money.
@@Tom-rd8dd usually, private schools are for rich people to avoid dealing with the crappy public schools their politics created. That will be the 5% of Americans who get good schooling from private institutions. Maybe more, but the point stands. The goal to privatize all education extends to the poor, and replaces public school. Since public schools are a service, not a commodity, there is no market for it for most of the population. Meaning no money. Whatever convoluted system the state comes up with the pay for it, the result will be ridiculous cost saving measures like PragerU. In short, the rich (as they do now) can afford paying enough tuition for good private schools. But most people aren’t rich enough to do that, so if they have to go to private school the school will suck.
Her "teacher's frustration" is as palpable as it is funny, especially considering it is directed at a corporation run by adults instead of a classroom full of kids...
Yeah, the same corporation, whose executives were exposed for financially supporting "volunteer programms" that sexually exploited young women and girls in poor African countries.
@@emma_luce_1123oh that's very easily answered: If you teach history in a way that misrepresents it and screws the facts to push a certain narrative. I'm PragerU's case this is counter left. Protests? Bad. Racism? Gone. America? Amazing. No questioning, no secondary sources, no independent research by students.
@@emma_luce_1123they aren’t teaching history, that’s the problem. The way they talk about history, fundamentally, doesn’t work the way children learn new things. Even if you’re conservative, you’d have to understand there are much better ways to teach kids America’s hostory
“I want mommy, I want milk, I want to be held, i want to be comforted, and if you do not do all of these things immediately, I will ruin your life.” Someone who thinks that about kids should NOT be allowed to influence kids.
@@ladyalicent705the context makes it worse i think. iirc prager is insinuating that babies are selfish creatures for having needs that they can’t fulfill by themselves, and is using that to justify human selfishness. thinking kids are selfish for having needs is a bad look, especially for an educator edit: and thinking human selfishness is not a bad thing is a pretty bad look too
Anyone who unironically uses that phrase that is NOT in reference to a hot female anime or animation character, I'm definitely giving them the side eye.
No, you misunderstood. "Warp-Up" describes the speedrunning skip where you warp to the top of the Statue of Liberty. Very important and practical skill.
As a student, this pains me so much. Please teachers, some of us do care about our education but we can and will stop caring if you use this shit instead of your own lesson plans.
Ugh. As a U.S. history nerd myself, PragerU ought to be considered a slap in the face to anyone who truly cares about getting kids to love the subject. That error regarding John Quincy Adams pissed me off too.
One of the lesson videos is on Columbus (ugh). The Columbus character in the cartoon has a (bad) Spanish accent and uses Spanish phrases. Literally the reason we have a Columbus Day, is because it was originally like the Italian version of St. Patrick’s Day or Cinco de Mayo. Columbus was ITALIAN. RIP Italians I guess lol
@@pierregibson6699 As a Jew myself, the discussions surrounding antisemitism in the country are horrible in both our curriculum and our national media. We have got to do better. As for Italians, well, I don't think any Italian with common sense wants to claim Christopher Columbus as theirs, unless they're from Genoa. Even then, I still doubt they want him.
i'm sorry but i love how enthusiastic your cat is about getting attention from you when you're animated. what a great cat. video is also fantastic and i appreciate the teaching-deconstruction of low-hanging fruit
So kids can't get graduation credit for AP African American studies but hey, "lessons" from the Praeger U. propaganda machine are hunky dory. That's just fine.
Yes. Because the right-wing hate you. There doesn't need to be any logic here, they don't operate using logic. They just really really fucking hate minorities.
And part of your grade is determined by how much you appreciate their "lessons." Literally trying to tie your grades to your devotion to conservative ideology
yep! It's right out of the fascist handbook. Dividing the nation and indoctrinating children is how evil people take power. It's exactly what the US did with native people and N**is did in Germany.
more direct than ever before! they used to try to be clever about it, and you had to admire the attempt. now it's just absolutely DEMANDING you to not think.
What also jumped out at me is how much the lesson plans just said, "Discuss." Discuss in groups? Discuss as a class? Discuss in pairs and then share out in a class? I assume they mean discuss as a class, which functionally means 1-5 students actually participating/answering questions and the rest of the class staring blankly hoping they don't get called on. Pair that with way too long videos, especially for young students, and you've got a recipe for a class full of restless, bored kids. Oh, and worksheets. How fun and engaging.
As a former Texan public school student, I regret to inform PU that teenagers like watching videos in class for reasons completely unrelated to educational retention. It's a chance to turn their brains off and not care for half an hour. Maybe check their phones.
I was a teenager once also and I can confirm. Maybe someone should create fun, thought provoking content, specifically for students languishing through 27 minute (mins) videos.
Can confirm, ex-teenager here, the only videos the classes I was in ever paid attention to were: 1) that time the history teacher had us watch that medieval movie with the "We Will Rock You" jousting tourney spectators (he said the anachronism was bang-on about the vibe, peasants did sing songs they thought were kickass while waiting for the show). 2) the time for all clearing an exam with 80%+ in the entire class, we got rewarded with the teacher's home videos of her adorable cat being a menace at her husband's ankles and kitty's valliant attempts at ambushing that poor man's ankles.
@@harrybudgeiv349 i could usually sit through videos if they were nice but my brother in christ, go watch an entire prager u video, in it's entirety without looking away or getting distracted
as a student, this typa shit makes me so mad lmao. everyone deserves access to a good education, and the way that all these conservatives are tryna turn school into a place of pure obedience and indoctrination instead of a place where students are given opportunities to actually learn is such a grave injustice.
this type of thing has already happened to a lesser degree in a good bit a schools teaching the millennial generation...... taught a whole lot of obedience and not much else....
Condolences. That said, I’ll add that school has more or less always, to varying extents, been that: a tool to inculcate future workers under capitalism. This view of it is complicated by a lot of the teachers having much more benign ideology about it all. Alas, though, that’s basically what the system is for. :’(
Not offensive at all. As an American, I completely agree in many ways. The only thing is that I have a hard time telling how many Americans actually believe what the Right spews, since Right Wing propaganda takes up so much political discourse. They’ve muddied the sociopolitical waters for years now, and I hate it so much here. However, I am hopeful that these are actually the (very loud) dying screeches of conservative thought. One day, these fascists and bigots will be right up in the history books along side the people that were pro-segregation. Millennials and the other younger generations are generally more progressive than ever, and society is moving on without those bigoted losers. It’s got them scared (and it’s got Right Wing grifters making bank off of that fear).
yes and no. People are increasingly LOUD in thier fascism, but the large majority of the vote is still DEFINITELY not. There's absurd voter suppression with everything from wild gerrymandering to baseless locking people up with minimum charges to remove thier right to vote. And despite that, they're kept in power only by making people so TIRED they don't come out. Even in the heart of red territory like I am, where I could count the blue victories in the last century on my fingers, if everyone actually came out to vote it would still be solidly blue. Amid many anti-trans laws being passed, actual SUPPORT for those laws was lower than ever, with only around a quarter to a third in favor. So it's less "Becoming fascist," more "the fascism already present realized it's dying and is trying to recover with increasingly loud desparation." They're gaining more power with thier bold plays, making the law itself more in line with thier ideals, but it's to try and refill thier dwindling numbers.
As a teacher, I was not expecting a great break down of lesson plans and blooms of all things popping up in my “play next” video today. Lovely channel find, thanks!
They want to expose their brand to kids, but they don't respect children as people enough to do it right. A kid who goes through the lesson will associate PragerU as that company that made that boring video in school when they scroll by it on youtube later that day (or sneaking on the phone while the movie is playing) and avoid it. Kids know brands and remember that stuff. Toymakers have known that for decades now.
I'm not American, and I'm sure that PragerU will never find its way into my old schools, but this makes me even more thankful that I had teachers that cared about what they were teaching and encouraged discussion and interaction with the content, not this lazy slop that will no doubt continue to be churned out by pragerU.
I love watching your little lovebug of a kitty cat. It's almost like he's worried about you ranting to what looks like no one, and he is trying to calm you down with nuzzles, showing his belly, and slow-blinking at you.
The evident lack of effort/research put into their education materials seems to betray exactly what they think of education. It's not actually for education, or to get kids to think, it's to tell them what to think. They think there's just nothing to it, teaching kids is easy, know stuff and tell it to the kids, nothing else needed. They think teaching is trivial. No wonder they disrespect public schools, advocate for cutting funding, and refuse to acknowledge the desperate needs of teachers for A) more compensation B) increased access and materials, and so much more.
As someone who works at daycare, Prager U is a The Spot from Across The Spider-verse to me. Something that seems like nothing at first, a silly little joke if you will, and is now gradually becoming a large threat😳. Education and learning should be speaking to children. Prager U makes orders and demands at children.
I'm very glad you avoided discussing the politics. Too many people think that criticism of PragerU and conservatives in general is just "both sides are gonna disagree". But honestly people need to understand that these conservatives aren't just giving different opinions, they're providing substandard crap as an educational service. It's one thing to have different political views, it's another to just be crap.
The left-wing equivalent, I reckon, would be if you let Ward Churchill or Caleb Maupin design an elementary school curriculum. There's bias, and then there's egregious bias (or outright deception).
@@dinosaysrawr Add a few pagan woo "I don't see color" white savior tumblr witches to mirror the Evangelical batshittery I've noticed to round up your metaphor.
@@dinosaysrawr I'd argue Caleb Maupin, despite his communist-sounding rhetoric, is actually far right, given his authoritarian and socially-conservative views. He openly praised Donald Trump for chrissakes
Another worrying aspect is that showing kids Ben Shapiro and Michael Knowles videos in class will certainly kickstart some of them down the alt-right pipeline by normalizing those personalities.
I was very alarmed on hearing this news. However, ironically, these lessons seem to be so awful that it will likely have a net negative impact. Teachers who are even slightly competent will give this a pass, and teachers who do use the curriculum will mostly simply poison the well for the content covered. This video didn’t go into politics. However, it’s surprisingly unwise timing for the gov of FL. It’s likely this material will be used where parents are paying attention, and aren’t sympathetic to the agenda of PU. Those constituents can make an awful stink for the presidential hopeful there just as we approach the first primaries. Not that I’m sympathetic. Let him cook. 😅
Another reason why PragerU might want its material in schools is that it's one less lesson covering anything that could be considered "woke." Their lessons are educational as far as they prevent kids from being "misinformed" by liberal bias, or so they would say.
In other words preventing kids from learning that not everyone is born straight and will either realize it and be forced in the closet or come out and most likely be bullied for it
Absolutely - the purpose isn't to be a better resource on merit or quality, but to take up attention, space, and time away from better things. "Hey here's a free thing, why do we pay for those other ones?"
Reminds me of pedagogy of the oppressed, in which students are seen as containers that need to be filled by which they are seen as proper students as long as they remain subservient to the teacher / the lesson. It also really bothers me that they use the word appreciate so much, I hate the idea of telling student how they should feel about a topic, we should allow them to engage with the subject and make their own conclusions with it.
I am also a education major, but it's focused in biology and in Brazil, I love how they started the objectives with the verb "understand" when we are told so many times to not use "understand", because you can't to assess if a student understood something, better verbs would be: define, record, cite, exemplify, enumerate, etc. All verbs that you can see your students doing! I am just in a few minutes in and so much is wrong! Edit: oh dear lord, the rest of the lesson is just as bad and the questions don't make any sense!
My guess is that a qualified educator wrote the promotional summary about how this was going to work, but a bunch of entirely unqualified people wrote literally everything else. This feels to me like marketing Snake Oil: the pitch is great, but the product is a scam. However, if the goal is to make a list of things you want kids to believe, then force them to sit and listen to the list, memorize it, and quiz them to make sure they remember (which is the essence of all the high school and college classes I've taken that were essentially a series of boring lectures), then this is the perfect vehicle. You can slot anything into that. It sounds like a propaganda machine for impressionable children that will believe what they're told if adults say it. Thankfully, Florida's government is trying to prevent indoctrination of children, rather than replace it with their own content, because that would be sneaky and wrong.
I worked for a huge textbook company for a while as a proofreader. Books went through at least 5 rounds of proofing. The first two were essentially editing: the first one looking for potential mistakes in content, done by an expert in the field; the second by an expert in the English language to check if the language was clear and age-appropriate. After that, two different proofreaders went over the text to find errors (of course many would already have been caught, it’s not like the first two people looking at the text were unable to spot a spelling mistake) like misspellings, capitalizations, punctuation, etc. Another person would do the same thing, this time also checking for layout and pagination (especially after you make changes you may end up with things not fitting on the page quite right). And the last person would do a final check of print proofs, often also comparing to another regional edition (for example, Texas has long wanted to be special and have their own standards) to make sure that things that were supposed to be the same across editions (I did math books, so for example if the same problem was in the Texas and the Minnesota edition, they should match in content - because sometimes different editors will make different changes and then things look unnecessarily inconsistent if one book had a solution that was, say 3.5 or 3.4 because calculations were done to a different decimal before rounding). I am sharing this because it is absolutely unacceptable, in my view, to create widely-distributed lesson plans that have spelling errors, inconsistencies, etc… When people use these as learning materials, the quality needs to be above-average and as close to perfect as possible. I will usually find 5 or 6 misspellings in a novel, but I don’t expect to find any in a textbook - I think in my whole career as a student I found 2 or 3, and I not only have a Bachelor’s, but I did a few extra years of College-level studying because I started in Italy, then went to Holland, and ended up in the States, so my work from other countries didn’t transfer. One of the things that I find most distasteful about extreme individualism is this idea that every individual or company gets to reinvent the wheel and do things their way. “Oh, these massive educational companies spend thousands of hours editing and proofing books, and it costs tens of thousands of dollar per book! We can easily do it for 10% of that by just hiring one writer and one editor/proofreader who will work for minimum wage!” And they don’t even think about the fact that it isn’t wasteful to spend so much money on making sure to get it right. Ugh.
@@necropolistc6357We value them a lot more than you. Children that is, not fetuses. We value them so much that we don’t want to force a baby to be born to two parents who literally don’t want them! We want them to have good lives! Right wingers like you on the other hand would sooner force a rape victim to give birth to a child that she can’t support, doesn’t want and is at risk of harming due to trauma, to you, the quality of life for the child or mother doesn’t matter, as long as they are alive, forgive me but I don’t think that’s giving anybody value, let alone kids.
sadly, bad indoctrination is indoctrination. It's meant to reinforce indoctrination and incuriosity in a home that has OAN running in the background. It's meant to make kids questioning their parent's politics more difficult.
@rayman11 anyone can look up a definition. But I'd be willing to bet you lack the wisdom and critical thinking skills to apply that definition, or recognize it being applied before your very eyes 🤷♂️
As someone who teaches 7th Grade Social Studies, I would never used PragerU. I'm working a Master's in American Government and History, and their materials are just so historically inaccurate, bending and twisting the truth to serve their own ends instead of an educational end.
They don't want any critical questions asked or answered. You hit the nail on the head when you said indoctrination. You can't ignore their politics unfortunately, because that's what they want taught - their opinions, not facts and certainly not critical thinking. Students are going to sit there and absorb and regurgitate what they saw and heard.
As a new teacher about to start in September, those lesson plans were horrendous! The learning objectives were vague, the formative assessments (checks for understanding) were not described at all, the standards were missing… I could go on! But you summarized it perfectly! All Prager U cares about, it seems, is getting their brand in classrooms. We were all mesmerized by their blatant attempts to indoctrinate kids through their “rewrites” of history that, I for one, overlooked that it was just capitalism all along…
People have been sayin' that about your bee whole for a long time. That it's like a truck stop but strictly for Felching bee whole's and servicing glory hole's in the bathrooms.
@@MojaveMoron Good one. Too much of a coward to come up with a real insult so you go the tired to death passive-aggressive "i'm not saying but i'm saying...." format. Ha... you basically just made fun of yourself with that lame ass insult attempt. I'm simply trolling in that above comment, not a realy insult... you tried to directly insult me and it just came off as pathetic. Damn... total failure (probably not just here either, wal mart cart wrangler for life I bet!!)
This actually makes me feel better. My immediate worry was that Florida would be using *effective* far-right indoctrination on grade school kids, but these lesson plans are...not that.
while it migh look bland, its whats said at 26:18, they want children to be obediant, bored and uncurious. that makes an "apolitical" adult that can easily do what theyre told because nationalistic values are normative and "whats best" (to not mention far right bigoted thinking, but its redundant already). so it is dangerous.
@@charmingnarcisse While it might succeed at making them bored & uncurious, i have a feeling that telling children to watch a nearly half hour video of two people talking will make them the exact opposite of "obedient".
Everything is indoctrination, it just depends which values you want your child to have. It is technically indoctrination to tell your child that murder is bad, because that is putting something into their head. But in anycase some indoctrination is bad, most is good, PragerU's is probably unethical at the least because why would they need to show political icons to children? Children shouldn't be involved in politics if they can help it.
@@Ajia_No_Envy indoctrination is depositing information uncritically. it’s true that a lot of historical education, especially pre critical theory and more modern educational philosophy, does qualify but it’s not nearly as broad or applicable as that
@@ItHadToBeSaid I knew American schools were shyte but I didn't know they went "don't question it" instead of "here's more resources, go wild, if you have questions I'm always available between classes". Like, in my little bumfuck nowhere bumpkin 300 people village grade school I moved to up here in America's hat, we could always go "why, why, why, what if, what it", even if the answer we got was more of a "this is where you want to look" than an actual explanation (because time). The only thing I was "indoctrinated" to have is shit like how to write, read, count, and then basic grammar and those cursed multiplication tables. Literally everything else was on the table even if the answer was "look it up in the library we've got a few books on that one". It works something like that in the US, right? Right????
Thank you so much. I taught 7th-8th grade English in rural Utah until I quit to gender transition, something that my school would absolutely have had issue with. It's so nice to see a voice that can use concise language to explain why Prager Kids content makes me so angry even if viewed purely as an educator.
I mean that is what it has predominately been made for in the past, for right wing “home schooling” lessons for the most insufferable parents you’ve ever met to force upon their kids when they get home from school, and online videos for right wing RUclips. It’s also primarily a “think tank” which is effectively just a fancy way of saying “political tool” for the oil industry and Christian dogma (this isn’t theory, it’s literally a major part of their founding and funding)
Seeing their lesson on the Federalist Papers is maddening. My master's degree was in US History and I focus specifically on this time period. The fact that they're acting as if the Federalist Papers are official documents, and it's not just PragerU doing this, leaves me with migraines.
i read some of them for my american pop culture class i took and omfg most of them are just rambles i have no idea how they got so popular lmao its just all venting
Really enjoyed this, I've always been curious what PragerU crapped out for schools since they are so arrogant and dismissive of children's needs and autonomy.
Every public speaker should be mandated by law to have a -cat- Public Speaking Pet™ that watches their hand movements and tries to snuggle with them in the middle of work
I’m also surprised at how bad these are given how much money these people have. Like, are all of Florida’s educational materials this bad, or did PragerU just get approved for political reasons???
I spent one year in college in Florida. I noped out and came right back to New Jersey because the stuff that COLLEGE was teaching in Florida was stuff I learned between MIDDLE SCHOOL and HIGH SCHOOL. It was absolutely a waste of time and money. Just avoid Florida...and Texas...basically the whole southern states in general, really.
@@ItWasSaucerShaped, you should be aware that the term “flyover country” literally means the part of the US that planes fly over when they travel from NYC or DC to LA. Neither FL nor TX are normally on those routes.
@@ChristopherSadlowskijust curious cus im currently attending college in florida, what were some things they taught there that’s middle/high school stuff in nj?
As someone who used to work in classrooms and actually ran a literacy program, this hurts my heart and soul. These kids are being deprived, and the teachers are being cheated. This sort of material is basically designed to fail.
When I was in middle school, every year the social studies teachers would do a “Cold War Simulation” where groups of students (across all grades) would be a certain country and “be part of the Cold War”. This was not only very engaging and interesting, it taught us more about what happened during the Cold War than if we had watched videos and taken tests. This is what education should be.
18:06 If I was in six grade and I had to do that lesson, I would be bored to tears. That is just insulting to their intelligence. Like I get it they're 12, but they should still be challenged. It really shows Prageru's inexperience in education and how their content isn't designed for learning but as propaganda. They don't want students to discuss the topic in class and develop critical thinking skills. They just want them to absorb information and not ask questions.
I think this kind of education, which favors the uncurious and compliant, does another important job: it washes out the curious, interested, and less pliable. Which then in turn insures that the lower classes are gonna be compliant, because their children who wash out won’t have resources to go to a private school or get engaging homeschooling.
Hi Glenn I hope my comment didn't sound as a form of privacy invasion your comment tells of a wonderful Woman with a beautiful heart which led me to comment I don't normally write in the comment section but I think you deserve this complement. If you don’t mind can we be friends? Thanks God bless you….
In a lesson about the Statue of Liberty, I would include material about why she comes from France, and what the French and American revolutions have in common. But what do I know, I’m just a teacher. 🤷😏
That’s probably in the video. I believe the disconnect between suggested activities, and the lesson objectives, is that they genuinely expect that JUST the video will accomplish the objectives. The teacher is only there to cue up the vid and hit start. That’s some peak disrespect.
And then you could have an activity where students create their own fictional country that helped the US during the war--or maybe is friends with the us for other reasons--and to create/draw their own gift to the US that represents freedom and the 2 countries' bonds. That would actually be fun and engaging.
Hopefully, those who are indoctrinated by this material will find a way to travel to Paris so they can see another copy of her. Then they might be curious enough to research the truth.
Key word in that quote is "everything." She criticized them from an educational stand point, put that isn't everything there is to criticize them about.
People have already criticized the politics of PragerU, so it's refreshing to see someone tackle down the other aspect of it, while doing so in a calm and respectful way. It's good to know that there are people like you out there who aspire to be real teachers, and I hope you succeed in educating the future generations of your country. 🙌
Analyzing a lesson plan from decades of failed public education teaching methodologies is always a honest and successful practice. Keep up the good work. A really great teacher would have a student of hers critique these lessons, but....well.. enough said.
@@davidEdwardsTalk From someone who knows you never went to public grade school I would like to know when and how you learned how to critique teachers.
I was a GED tutor, teaching the students that were failed by the one size fits all methodology. I was trained as a trainer and used Instructional Systems Design in a former job.
@@davidEdwardsTalk I see. As interested as I may be in the methods and reasons for the hows and whys of 5 to 8 yr olds taking GED class, I feel that one of the methods descrbed above could stand some chance of sucess. The other method gives a real hung over substitute teacher on a rainy friday afternoon vibe.
🎉 Get started with Notion, sign up for free: ntn.so/zoebee
I remember when kids could grow up to be whatever they wanted.
I heard the biggest library in Florida just closed.. somebody stole the book.
3rd
Wow, I thought PragerU was a good resource.
Thanks so much for telling us the truth about them.
A good alternative to Notion is Obsidian
The other 'joy' of poor, uninspiring lessons is that classroom management becomes impossible as kids will misbehave if unengaged.
And, provide excuses to justify harsh school punishment
@@madelinecoven6428Harsh school punishment which will very clearly be enforced on a racial basis.
Yup, I couldn't imagine trying to make my students watch a twenty-seven minute video. The chaos they would devolve into. Also, what if admin walks in? I don't think they'd be amused by my lesson for the day being showing a video for over half the class. The one where you tell students "we're going to play a game!" and then make them watch a video of someone else playing a game would cause a revolt.
Not gonna say ive had teachers that are super racially motivated, but ffs it does happen ew
And Prager Screw-You will probably be advocating for the return of the cane for dealing with misbehaving students.
Native Texan here: What happened is that a single State Board of Education member announced that PragerU was coming to classrooms. Immediately afterwards, the rest of the Board of Education leadership said she went rogue, and that there were no plans now or in the immediate future to let public school teachers use it, and that the company hadn't even submitted educational materials to the state for review. So PragerU is staying out of Texas classrooms. For now.
Genuinely very happy to hear that
frankly, it needs to stay that way
Oh THANK THE LORD, BLESSED BE!
Phew! Let’s hope it stays that way, but it’s Texas so probably not
Unusual Texas W.
The fact they got people like Ben Shapiro in there is insane. He is not a licensed teacher but a political icon. They just put their own guys from the Prager U corporation into their own lesson plans. It’s like if Elon musk personally gave a lesson about the uses of cars, and ONLY showed Tesla cars in the examples and then proceeded to advertise space X. Then giving them a worksheet on the benefits of buying Tesla stock.
Well, they don't care if the people they support in office have a law degree or even understand the law, so it's not a stretch for them to have the same kind of people as 'teachers.'
@@megamangos7408 And it's even less of a stretch for Dennis Prager to have such people as "students" given the tripe presented in the regular "Prager U" videos. Indeed, Dennis Prager wants people who are completely incompetent and lacking the ability to think and reason for themselves working death-dealing hours in all fields for little-or even no-pay. These lesson plans, falsely so-called, are simply his latest step to achieve that aim.
Also people can only communicate with Elon over twitter
with that logic, common parents shouldn't be allowed to teach their kids how to wipe their ass or to not rape. try a better argument there bud
Like Ben Shapiro could be informed on some topics but he is just a political icon.
“What colors is the Statue of Liberty?” Could be a good question to lead into a chemistry lesson, but it’s pretty clear that’s not what’s happening here,
That was my precise thought! Learning about the development of patina would be a great tidbit. But no, we both know that wasn’t a consideration.
Haha I thought the same thing. When she said it, I quickly started scanning the page, to see if it added anything about why its those colors! But nope, I think it was the shortest one. Missed opportunity. But then I started thinking maybe they have to stick to there subject. But I would have to add it, if I were the teacher. I had a teacher that always added a unique fact about our subject for the day. Mr. Brown 7th grade science teacher, annnnnddddd that might be the only teacher I can remember name grade and subject from K-12. Kinda embarrassing….
Rather than a what it would be a why in that scenario tho
"Oh you say turquoise? You would be wrong if you were alive 200 years ago!" Missed opportunity smh
Seriously, “Teal/Turquoise? but it’s made of copper”
the fact that the lessons plans repeat thing 3 times. As well as including "apperciate" as a grading criteria. Is truly cult like.
@thricegreat7175. Or maybe yours was just especially bad
It just becomes more apparent when you see it decades later, as an adult. The US education system is dismal, & saturated with propaganda. It's very cult-like.
@thricegreat7175 Let's think about why "appreciate" is bad
How would you feel about kids in Germany to appreciate their history?
Op your profile pic as Kent Mansley talking distraughtly into the phone adds so much to this comment thank you
@@realdragonI'm sure there is a lot to appreciate about German history but obviously not everything. Keep in mind Germany is like 10 times older than the usa
I went to a Christian private school for 7th and 8th grade that used PragerU textbooks. You would have had an aneurysm if you read the part where they said child labor wasn't really that bad of a thing during the Industrial Revolution.
The children yearn for the mines
@@williambeisel5686 no literally that's how it read 😂😂😂
sometimes they think we yearn for mines. do we?
@@williambeisel5686i mean, my kid does spend many hours playing Minecraft.
@@mmartens3They yearn for the mines. *send them back*
Watching your brain explode over terrible lesson plans as your cat unendingly showers you with affection is a brand new form of unintentional comedy.
The cat is just so cute 😭
The cat: Hooman I know you are distressed, I do not understand why, but I shall love you regardless, hooman.
I just wanted her to pet the cat. PLEASE SOMEBODY PET THE CAT
I love the cat just sitting there 😊
@@enfysiridescent At 15:01 the cat is getting petted.
Critical thinking is the bane of most logical fallacies, no wonder they don't want to teach it.
Critical thinking can only go as far as the framework taught.
Your lot are the definition of logical fallacy and degeneracy. Zoe is a fraud and a reprobate.
nobody needs critical thinking on the statue of liberty its not that complicated
@ultravoid5398 Actually, they do, specifically to think deeper about what caused people to immigrate, what happened after they immigrated, challenges or barriers to immigration, whether or not the info you've received is biased, the list goes on and on and on.
@@ultravoid5398exhibit a of lack of critical thinking skills
"This lesson is for 6th graders."
If any teacher presented that lesson to 6th graders, they'd be ripped to shreds for treating their students like idiots, BY their students.
Then the students will be suspended for "back talk"... Sad.
@@aralornwolf3140 In my experience, there's at least that ONE kid who genuinely doesn't give a **** and will say what everyone is already thinking, it may be the kid that always gets detention, but it's the natural order, if something is stupid, kids will call it out QUICK, at ALL ages.
often, (well for me) its true
I missed this at first and just assumed it was for Kindy kids. I'm assuming sixth grade is like 11? Yeah, ripped to shreds in seconds.
@@InkyDustMan A toast to the Class Clown and/or the Rebel, eternal and omnipresent and accidentally starting the mutinies.
you mean to tell me they’re more interested in indoctrinating kids with a certain political view than actually giving them a good education like they say they do??
Shocking, I know.
Sick projection. Government schooling is literal indoctrination, by definition. The Prussian model was invented by a dictator in order to create obedient soldiers and factory drones.
Prager has admitted that his entire goal is to indoctrinate kids at a Mom's for Liberty conference earlier this year.
honestly. no organization with a political agenda should be allowed anywhere near the education system, especially prageru
@@br1ghts0ng i think you meant teaching shouldn't be involved in the larger political attitudes but this would still be impossible to implement because everything is technically politics. the way you teach, what you teach and who you teach are all internal policies that each teacher upholds.
Cat events:
8:10 - eepy cat
14:21 - usurper cat
14:27 - headbutt cat
14:55 - cuddly cat
15:18 - bean shot followed by more cuddles
20:39 - jump cat
23:00 - bean shot #2
23:28 - omg he wave arms in air oh my god baby
Glad someone pointed out the cat in the room. Orange sherbert colored kitty is ❤.
the hero we need
he reachin for the patreon
I'm sorry to say you forgot to record the 'sneezy cat' event at 19:17
Nah bro you gotta change 8:10 to jump scare cat, cause this is my first video and when the cat appears I just went “WOAH! Hold up! When tf did el Gato Grande get there???” And then I backed up the video to see if I’m stupid or not.
Zoe's cat being her her emotional support as she grows increasingly frustrated with PraegerU's failures of lesson plans is the love we want to see in this world.
To be fair, they never said they wanted to "change the future of education in America" for the better
This is correct
🖤💜💙💚💙💜🖤
Much Love!
Zoe, how dare you suggest that kids should think critically in the classroom? What if they discover that we’re teaching them false biased information. We can’t let that happen
Yup. They also seriously think this is all education is or should be
Oh no, if it isn't the truth
🖤💜💙💚💙💜🖤
Much Love!
Like, I say what you will about John and Hank Green, but at least Crash Course encourages kids to think critically and actually has effort put into it.
Exactly, Zoe trying to "fix" these lesson plans misses the point. They weren't made to teach kids, they were made to indoctrinate and to prevent any critical thinking.
@seanoneil8137I can feel it coming inside me !
Aside from the learning objectives being total Bs. The fact that they think Kindergarteners are going to sit through a 25 MINUTE video is insane
My three year old can't sit still long enough to watch a movie that she asks for!
@@conorford7852 you should teach them better. My 4 year olds can watch movies from start to finish since they were three with no issues. Sounds like a parenting diff.
@PolitikPolitik-fh2qc Kids are wired differently and it's not a matter of teaching differently. My brother and I didn't have that problem when we were little, and we didn't need any coaching to sit still and watch movies or to listen for story time. That she has trouble getting to sleep every night, even when there's no naptime, means that there's a chance that she has ADHD. For most kids it's too early to tell for sure, but it's something we're keeping an eye out for.
Either way, point stands. Edutainment videos typically suck and almost never keep a kids focus, especially not for that long.
@@conorford7852 I mean I mostly said that because both of you implied it happened to all kids. My son is autistic so he has his moments close to adhd. But it's all about how to handle them. My family has a ton of kids. And has a pretty wide range. But if you treat them right and teach them properly. Most can contain that energy. It also helps to have an outlet for that energy regularly.
I think videos in education suck a lot. Whether right or left. But there's another point that some probably learn better from them. I wouldn't and don't. But I most likely didn't fit the mold. When in school I would have learned best if everything was taught by applicable methods. But thats probably unreasonable for many subjects and not suitable for everyone for the cost.
I think it depends on what their watching because when I was in kindergarten we watched videos all the time and most of the time most of us sat and watched the video quietly.
Zoe: PragerU fails to adhere to basic pedagogical standards.
Me: yes, I understand completely. Your cat is a fluffy boi.
Omg an unlearning! It's always fun to see other cool RUclipsrs in cool RUclipsrs comment section
I agree
Love your content, thanks
🫥🫥🫥🫥🫥🫥🫥🫥🫥🫥😅@@Sharpov1997
it’s actually a subtle way to make kids less patriotic by associating patriotism with frustration
(edit: to be clear this was a joke)
Literally me. Huge part of why I'm left leaning now is how disappointing and frustrating my Texas education was
@@squiddler7731I am also a left leaning Texan. I'm very hurt to see a very beautiful state turn sour just because of these bad apples who are in power. It also hurts because it's made a rift in my family. I used to get along with my family so well but after the pandemic I feel like I lost a part of them because everyone is on opposite sides and everything is political
That doesn't matter, if all Ur taught is "how great America is and that the entire world is inspired by it and wants to move there" (which we're not U guys are synonymous with Guns, poor public infrastructure and far right politics) then even if patriotism seems frustrating, that just scares you into questioning it more bc if this is the best we have to offer and it's just about survive able god forbid we try anything different.
@@AJBrook-1017The left made covid political. You forced people to obey useless rules and take experimental medicines.
@Matthafford yeah I need to update that I took it like 10 years ago. Thanks for the reminder.
PragerU's tendency to have students describe how they would do something rather than actually do it mirrors how they approach teaching.
Yeah. I always get angry when people insist on that stuff, because some people do. Like, sure, that’s the *first* step… but then you have to actually do things. You also are supposed to redescribe things later to reflect what you actually did instead of what you originally planned if it’s not the same.
Literally Ben shapiro with the "Hypothetically speaking"
@@Ajia_No_Envylet's say that I'm right. in this situation, you are wrong.
I think part of the problem is that these lessons aren't actually developed for use in public schools. The politics of Prager are also behind the structural problems in their lessons.
This flavor of conservative doesn't even believe in public schools. These lessons are designed for conservative homeschool parents and to entice conservative public school parents into homeschooling. They are designed to be done with little materials, not needing a large group of kids, and no expertise on the part of the "teacher".
Putting this into the public school only serves to further that agenda. Whether conservative parents decide to pull their kids to avoid the social influence of the public school, or the liberal parents pull their kids to avoid this garbage curriculum, either way, their objective is met.
@@troublecloud1487its called the Dumbing Down of American workers and the Reichwing has been orgasming about it for 40 yrs because its what the Oligarchy WANTS
Young kids can think deeply? Hmm… that explains why Avatar is one of the highest rated tv shows ever and that’s all about how genocide, fascism, authoritarianism, and the like, is bad
Goated show. Rewatch it all the time and Aang and Uncle Iroh always giving me more and more wisdom even as I grow older.
Kids like it when they're taken seriously. Sometimes they shouldn't be, but in education they should ALWAYS be.
In my own journey to turn away from Right-Wing Extremism, i rewatched ATLA. I loved the show, but the messages didn’t really come across when i was 11. Glad I took the time to rewatch
As someone who’s technically still a kid, most of us can actually have opinions and feelings about complicated topics. Shocker, I know. Also, Avatar is one of the best shows of all time.
I been so obsessed with the franchise lately. I just came back from an avatar world building analysis so seeing this comment was funny
As a Florida resident, it does not surprise me in the slightest that Florida would consider PragerU a perfectly acceptable form of education. Please help us.
Well, that happens when florida man is in charge
It's Florida, it might as well be the tartarus itself
Its hot, it has reptiles that eat humans, it has a bunch of right winger pigs
I would but old Ronnie has made it so even mentioning my existence is a punishable offense
come, join us in canada. it is only slightly better in terms of education. atlest in bc, BC hydro funds lots of the stuff in the material, and just advertises there products. when they talk about energy generation they only talk about, water and wind (there biggest money makers), they push down nuclear (pros: safe, clean, cool af, need degree to mine the materials so no underpaid workers. cons: hard to transport materials, costly) and solor. they also have a complete monopoly in the energy generation in BC
I can't help but think about how passive all of these lesson plans are. Like, kids of any age enjoy playing around or thinking about complicated things. All of these lesson plans are just being sat in front of a screen and repeating the information you're told. No new ideas will come from these lessons, I imagine kids will be largely bored out of their minds.
“Bruh sat in front of a screen and repeating what they’re told” is such an accurate and dystopian phrase
Welcome to PragerU where you get bite sized lessons! For Kids!
I'm sure "no new ideas" and "repeating the information you're told" is exactly what they want out of these lessons. Can't have people thinking critically now, can we?
@@atomatopia1 I seem to recall George Orwell warning us regarding the likes of Dennis Prager in "1984".
Honestly I see it as a win. What conservatives don’t understand is human brains aren’t computers. When human brains get bored, they don’t just go along with their programming regardless, they rebel. I imagine the generations suffering through this new wave of alt right education will be even *more* rebellious than the ones before them, and it’ll be a joy to see. It would be amazing to watch all the conservative media outlets collectively scratch their heads in utter confusion when the students they’ve been trying to indoctrinate refuse to retain any of the information they try to force into their skulls.
“They don’t care about education. They just care about putting their brand in front of your children”
Reminds me of a university that, by their own making, invalidated the diploma of every graduate by becoming unaccredited.
Conformity to their ideals is all they care about, even if their ideas are ridiculous, false and exploitive, they have never cared about what happens to kids after they are born. All about controlling their minds.
I think they only care about making kids believe certain things, and putting mechanisms in place so that kids will not question PragerU's bs.
Seriously. Their goal is to familiarize sixth graders with Ben Shapiro and Michael Knowles.
I feel so bad for people who will have to treat PragerU like a valid source of education
The only valid thing in these "lessons" is to show the students and teachers what lessons are NOT supposed to look like.
Don't pity them; criticize them for their utter cowardice.
You DON'T have to Treet it like a valid source of education. If anyone tries to push that on you, simply have examples at the ready and don't give them an inch
I don't give a fuck what so-called "laws" in Florida are. Teachers in Florida have the absolute legal right to not teach pragerU shit and have the absolute freedom of speech to teach truth. And Americans have the absolute freedom of speech right to be Communists and promote Communism and to be Anarchists and to promote Anarchy and to be Separatists and promote Separatism (breaking the country apart) and to be Animal Rights Vegans and to promote Veganism and to be Atheists and to spread Atheism and to be pro-worker unions and to be Alien Believers and to spread UFOlogy.
Prageru becoming an educational vendor in fl and tx just means that educators are *allowed* to use their stuff, not that they have to. Still sucks tho, i can see a good bit of teachers actively using these sources
2:08 - This person literally went:
"This video is no longer part of PragerU. This video was never part of PragerU."
Literally 1984, and not even a joke
@@styx15BAHAHAHA TRUE
I noticed that too. Like theyre not even smart enough to know the difference between "we deleted it and regret it" and "it never happened".
huh. reminds me of a certain date that china did that china also said never existed... hmmmmm (june 4 1989 to be exact)
It's low hanging fruit to destroy PragerU from a political angle. Seeing it done from an educational one is so satisfying.
Agreed, very informative too
Cool pfp btw
they're both low hanging fruit lmao
this one was rlly satisfying and informative tho
Their ideology isn't perfect but the promotion of open borders, cutting off children's penises and abortions all the way up to the moment of birth us definitely worse
@@lemonboiyoutube hell yeah you’re right
"it's not just politically charged it's not even well made" is a very fast way to lose credibility.
I've seen many a PragerU takedown, but I'm excited to hear your take on this new "educational" programming.
Ok, so PragerU has bad takes, but What about this fucking Pedagogy????
hello pup :shoebill:
I am glad to see this take. Looking at it from a teaching standard. Most people just attack the content, which is bad, but showing that the problem isn't just the content is important.
As someone with ADHD having to sit through these types of lessons, videos and having to answer the same questions three different times would have driven me bonkers.
Same. Lessons like this would have *killed* me.
Shit, I had arguments and straight-up walked out of class when teachers didn’t explore the depths of certain subjects I happened to already know something about, at times.
Kids may require education, but they are not stupid, and will absolutely see through the superficiality and lack of care displayed in these materials.
As someone without ADHD having to sit through these lessons and answer the same paper 3 times, would have driven me bonkers. Like I had a few teachers with this type of lesson plan and I remember arguing with them about how much of a waste of my time they were.
I would have loved to go through these. Maybe the curriculum works for some but not all
@@bgorg1 Yes, that is kind of how education works.
What happens when you work with videos and pre-made lesson plans is that you don't adapt to the kids in front of you. Our responses mentioned we have ADHD -- which by definition means we don't quite learn like most people -- but we are also a significant part of the population, so lesson plans and educational materials do need to be able to respond to various needs.
I think it has to do with your ADHD interest lol I love history so this would have been my jam. I hyper focused during history class
The fact that PragerU materials aren't good for educational use is not unintentional.
The "lesson" where a video and a worksheet based on it take up the entire class period is so that the "last few minutes of discussion" don't get into anything that could contravene the PragerU dogma.
These materials are superficial and non-critical specifically because that organization does not want American kids thinking critically about history or the world around them.
PragerU isn't just trying to make sure that kids hear their worldview, it's trying to make it the default and only "reasonable" worldview by stamping down on critical thinking in classrooms.
Gonna change my name to IndigoU so that I too can pretend to be an educational establishment
Even as an indoctrination tool, this fails epically because all these kids will do is associate Prauger U with being bored with class and avoid them in the future. Which is the complete opposite of what they want.
they gonna start making right wing false-history hyperpop songs to get them to listen
My chemsitry teacher had us watch Professor Dave Expalins and other chanels like his as a SUPPLIMENTARY MATERIAL OUTDIDE OF CLASS to help us better understand the material learned in class. I still watch Professor Dave sometimes because I don't associate his videos with frustration and time wasting.
Kurzgesagt alop has amazing educational videos. I once found one of their videos when I was doing research for a simple English paper that required 2 non-written sources, and now Ive watched all of their videos.
I don't think these videos will make kids want to learn more on their own like Professor Dave and Kurzgesagt do.
@@TedBilk help not the hyperpop 😭😭😭
@@TedBilk I really hope that’s gonna be cringeworthy AF, so them kids will bash it mercilessly.
@@TedBilk You assume they'd be able to make something catchy and not the cringiest, fakest soulless corporate pop song with 0 choreography skills, which is mighty generous of you.
This is geared toward "teaching" kids WHAT to think rather than HOW to think, which I believe was the greatest harm done to me until the time came when I was "allowed" to stop attending church and Sunday school at age 18.
Thats literally the liberal ideology that has been in schools for years.
Religion poisons the mind
That’s what schools been in every single state since the beginning of the modern education system. She’s just blaming PragerU for it because it got accepted into one state.
@@USAFORBETTER Uhhh, I stayed after school in fourth grade to catch up on math, and spent two weeks in summer school to finish the bio labs I'd left incomplete. Don't tell me I didn't have the opportunity to learn HOW to think. I don't know what church you went to, but trust me, there was no expectation to figure anything out for myself or to "show my work" in Sunday school. PragerU is garbage indoctrination, and I truly hope you're better than that.
@@USAFORBETTERNot at all, and even if it were, that’s even more reason to advocate for better education. Not double down on it being _terrible_
I remember my college professors telling us NOT to use PragerU as a reliable source a couple of years ago yet here we are. 😭
That is because education in America has been used as a tool for Marxists. Why would the NEA promote Prager U?
@@GenX_-um2ct they would not because they like to lie, a lot.
It's very unfortunate that such insufficient learning material is considered okay. Knowing myself as a child, at least, I certainly would not be interested. On a brighter note, it was a delight to see your cat. Please give them a kiss for me.
I remember when I was in middle school and was looking for more intelligent content on RUclips and I found Prager U. Even back then the videos were so bad and uninformative that I could not watch em even though I was much more sympathetic to right wing content than now.
@@otto_jk The first time I was introduced to PragerU was the War on Cars video, where they portray replacing parking with green spaces as bad, like directly animate parking transforming into green space,
my opinion on them hasn't changed since then,
side note, cat! :3
@@Nota-Skavenmy first thought was that they don't really say anything in the videos it's just vibes and posturing. I was like "Where are the studies? Why aren't you referencing studies?"
@@Nota-Skaven:3 moment
be careful with how you throw around those :3s... you might attract the transfems@@RichConnerGMN
Imagine having to watch a half hour Pragur U video in class in a world where School House Rock exists.
Some Russian kids were forced to watch Kids against wizards. Its way worse 😂
@@lalita9041I don't know what that is. Could you tell me more about this ?
School house rock >>>>
I STILL have "Just a Bill" and their Declaration of Independence songs stuck in my head. I miss School House Rock. :(
I love them, but their history lessons aren't that great. For other topics, go right ahead.
Obviously PragerU is bad, but look at that cat lounging on the sofa
Awwwwweeeee
❗ Goober spotted
After much contemplation of that cat, I must disagree. PragerU is considerably worse than most domestic cats.
@@timothymclean i think they were just pointing out the cat being a goofy little goober :3
THE BEAST‼️‼️‼️ i love him :3333
I have sat through numerous terribly boring lessons at my parents' church when I was 7 and 8, and I can say that they were just like PragerU's lessons. I learned NOTHING from them and gained no respect nor love for my parents' religion-- at the end of the day, it just felt like accidental indoctrination. They had no idea how to teach us children base knowledge to build off of, so when the lesson was over the only thing I learned was that "god is good, love him or else he'll be sad and you'll be deemed as unholy." And no offense to Christians at all, but MAN, this gave me no critical thinking, never gave me room to do anything but absorb information, and just gave me a bad view of Christianity that ultimately made me sick of it.
That being said, all pragerU's stuff does is shovel nonsense into young people and make them hate schooling more than they likely already do.
God my step grandparents are trying to do that w my brothers, now they just think religion is boring because they try to sit them down for AN HOUR STRAIGHT to learn about God through online lessons 😐
That’s so strange, like, wouldn’t it be a bit better for the education system to teach everyone that we all have different belief systems rather than just “love god or your unholy”?
The thing is that these lesson plans aren't broken, the things you are picking up on are not a bug, they are a feature. PagerU and the Conservatives behind them want to have students who get their opinions from the talking heads on a TV screen and are unable to do more than superficially understand what they are being told to believe. They fear giving kids critical thinking skills because if kids can question what they are being told, then they will start to question their Betters and see through the propaganda that the Right wants to indoctrinate them with. Remember that the Right loves the uneducated because it allows them to use fear and manipulation to control them. These plans are designed to intentionally harm kids' educations.
It’s a De-education program they think the kids are TOO smart for their own good in Dennis/conservatives opinion….
It's funny how you're critical instead of constructive. And look at the rhetoric you're using. It's politically charged lmao. Maybe stop using this as a talking point to criticize "the right". Maybe be constructive instead of pushing your own agenda? Maybe the point is education so focus on education and not "the right"?
@@samuelhong4272 I don't have an agenda to push, I'm not American so the systematic destruction of the US Education system by the MAGA, PragerU, and its ilk has zero effect on me. As such I am just calling it as I see it from the outside, and that is that Republicans and Conservative groups have steadily been eroding any part of education that teaches kids to think for themselves or to explore views other than those "approved" by the American Rightwing. The so-called "Parent's Rights" movement is very clearly a "Rights for Parents that believe the right thing" movement as it totally ignores and runs roughshod over the rights of any parents that aren't of the Christian Nationalist viewpoint. People like Besty Devoss have attacked and damaged the Education system, and now the SCotUS is working on it too. Good luck having kids that reach international standards with the current gutting of any teaching that dares to step out of line with the Theology of the White Christian Nationalists.
@samuelhong4272 but this IS a politically charged discussion. Prager U is a right-wing institution. They are not a real university, they are not comprised of real teachers and educational experts. They are all right-wing politicians, debaters and spokespersons. We cannot discuss their implication into Floridian and Texan school curriculums without facing the fact that this is an explicitly right-wing institution masquerading as an educational one. That is utterly immoral on any side of the political spectrum. A right-wing political institution should not have a place in defining education, just as much as a left-wing institution shouldn't. This should all be down to actual educators and teachers, which Prager U are not. Ignoring the obvious attempt at indoctrination and the political motivations behind Prager U's decisions is ignoring the full conversation and the seriously concerning forces at play here.
Exactly.
Dennis Prager and company are *not* stupid, as evidenced by how effective they've been at disseminating their ideology in a highly systematic and strategic fashion. So, the fact that these lesson plans are lazy, confusing, repetitive, boring, and age-inappropriate actually tells us something, and it's not just that the people doing it are just simple dumb-dumbs.
I'd say that it at least communicates volumes about how the Right sees children, and how little respect it has for them as beings.
This is what the privatization of education looks like. Watch a video, do a worksheet, follow a script. That’s what it’ll be for 95% of students. They don’t want students to think or learn, just absorb propaganda.
Ok so where I live, if you're getting assistance from the government you have to fulfill certain obligations, like applying for 20 jobs a week, and undertaking "training courses", some of the courses were ok, but all to often you would be given a worksheet and then just have to copy whatever the trainer was saying for 6 hours. On several questions we were told, "because of a typo in the worksheet, do not read the question, just write this answer."
Hardcore same vibes.
(Edit, the companies which provided these "courses" were privatized and often shut down after a short time only for the exact same staff to show up in a "new" company.)
wait private schools are considered a bad thing maybe I just never saw it where I live because the government and government schools suck so private schools are the norm for middle class and international schools for higher classes
@@Tom-rd8dd Think "private school" as in real shitty homeschool programs, especially the ones that pop up in fundamentalist religions that are designed by soccer moms with 0 background in education, that don't actually bother to go seek out recommended coursework provided by a plethora of schools' websites or even their country's department of education where possible, usually for free.
Not the prestigious schools that actively compete with each other for people's money and various grants and sponsorships, because THAT kind of private school is motivated to be hypercompetitive about the students' performance specifically because the better they are, the more money they get. (they're a whole other issue, mostly in corruption scandals and nepotism and bribery and tenured professors that really oughta be booted but aren't because tenure)
You want to make more workers to make you rich, not smart people to compete with you for the money.
@@Tom-rd8dd usually, private schools are for rich people to avoid dealing with the crappy public schools their politics created. That will be the 5% of Americans who get good schooling from private institutions. Maybe more, but the point stands.
The goal to privatize all education extends to the poor, and replaces public school. Since public schools are a service, not a commodity, there is no market for it for most of the population. Meaning no money. Whatever convoluted system the state comes up with the pay for it, the result will be ridiculous cost saving measures like PragerU.
In short, the rich (as they do now) can afford paying enough tuition for good private schools. But most people aren’t rich enough to do that, so if they have to go to private school the school will suck.
@@52flyingbicycles ahh So It already happened here then basically? Or am I just dum
Her "teacher's frustration" is as palpable as it is funny, especially considering it is directed at a corporation run by adults instead of a classroom full of kids...
Yeah, the same corporation, whose executives were exposed for financially supporting "volunteer programms" that sexually exploited young women and girls in poor African countries.
A corporation run by kids
@@thewhitefalcon8539 kids are generally better at critical thinking than the people running prager U
@@classroom8290 Koalas have better critical thinking skills than Prager U.
@HollyAnneThePaganChaosWitch please, koalas have higher standards. Let's not compare them to Penis Prager.
So not only it's a straight up propaganda, they couldn't even bother to make those "lessons" even slightly fun to learn. Somehow I'm not suprised.
How is it propaganda to teach history? 😂
@@emma_luce_1123oh that's very easily answered:
If you teach history in a way that misrepresents it and screws the facts to push a certain narrative.
I'm PragerU's case this is counter left. Protests? Bad. Racism? Gone. America? Amazing.
No questioning, no secondary sources, no independent research by students.
@@emma_luce_1123they aren’t teaching history, that’s the problem. The way they talk about history, fundamentally, doesn’t work the way children learn new things. Even if you’re conservative, you’d have to understand there are much better ways to teach kids America’s hostory
@@emma_luce_1123teaching that slaves were happy and natives liked christopher columbus isn’t history it’s propaganda
@@awkwardukulele6077 Good effort but I don't think the person who put their real name and birthday in as their username was arguing in good faith.
“I want mommy, I want milk, I want to be held, i want to be comforted, and if you do not do all of these things immediately, I will ruin your life.” Someone who thinks that about kids should NOT be allowed to influence kids.
that clip is amazing
To be fair, that’s taken out of context. But I absolutely agree that a rightwing propaganda outlet should not be used in schools!
Sounds like lyrics from "The Wall" or something
@@ladyalicent705the context makes it worse i think. iirc prager is insinuating that babies are selfish creatures for having needs that they can’t fulfill by themselves, and is using that to justify human selfishness. thinking kids are selfish for having needs is a bad look, especially for an educator
edit: and thinking human selfishness is not a bad thing is a pretty bad look too
Anyone who unironically uses that phrase that is NOT in reference to a hot female anime or animation character, I'm definitely giving them the side eye.
This video is hard to watch.
Not because of the lesson plans, but because of the blatant ignoring of cat who deserves all the pets.
Sam and cat
YES! I love the video, but Zoe, PLEASE PET DESMOND HE SO CLEARLY WANTS TO BE PET!!! PET THE BOY!!! PET HIM!!!
The best parasocial relationships are with cats on the internet. I unironically love Desmond.
I disagree.
@@LuckyPigeon1111 *you monster.*
No, you misunderstood. "Warp-Up" describes the speedrunning skip where you warp to the top of the Statue of Liberty. Very important and practical skill.
"But on August 25, 2023, veteran speedrunner D3NN15_PR4G3R_1776 made a discovery that would shake the Education Any% community forever..."
As a student, this pains me so much. Please teachers, some of us do care about our education but we can and will stop caring if you use this shit instead of your own lesson plans.
Ugh. As a U.S. history nerd myself, PragerU ought to be considered a slap in the face to anyone who truly cares about getting kids to love the subject. That error regarding John Quincy Adams pissed me off too.
One of the lesson videos is on Columbus (ugh). The Columbus character in the cartoon has a (bad) Spanish accent and uses Spanish phrases.
Literally the reason we have a Columbus Day, is because it was originally like the Italian version of St. Patrick’s Day or Cinco de Mayo. Columbus was ITALIAN.
RIP Italians I guess lol
@@irenafarmI guess the Italians in the US 100 years of whiteness has expired 😂 they are about to try to edit ✍️ them out of American History also
@@pierregibson6699 As a Jew myself, the discussions surrounding antisemitism in the country are horrible in both our curriculum and our national media. We have got to do better.
As for Italians, well, I don't think any Italian with common sense wants to claim Christopher Columbus as theirs, unless they're from Genoa. Even then, I still doubt they want him.
PragerU sex education worksheet contains a single phrase: "don't do it"
That's not a valid way to speedrun a sex ed worksheet
Then they get mad when teens get pregnant or nobody wants to have sex when they’re older
@@dudono1744
It's not real. It's just a joke. If they did do sex ed, it *would* be terrible.
This is wonderful, thank you so much for exposing quackery and, may I say, fraud in education.
Thank you so much! 💜
i'm sorry but i love how enthusiastic your cat is about getting attention from you when you're animated. what a great cat.
video is also fantastic and i appreciate the teaching-deconstruction of low-hanging fruit
So kids can't get graduation credit for AP African American studies but hey, "lessons" from the Praeger U. propaganda machine are hunky dory. That's just fine.
Yes. Because the right-wing hate you. There doesn't need to be any logic here, they don't operate using logic. They just really really fucking hate minorities.
And part of your grade is determined by how much you appreciate their "lessons." Literally trying to tie your grades to your devotion to conservative ideology
I was brought up in a ultra Christian Fundamentalist environment, this shit is psychotic
It’s because Prager U does actual legwork and AA studies are trash.
@@unknown5150variableYeah they went full mask off in that one. They literally framed Lee crushing a slave rebellion as a good thing
Ah yes, the "teach young kids why our country's so great so they don't feel they can question it" lesson.
That sounds so totalitarian it’s scary
@@halcyon.x it really does doesn't it?
Sounds like nazi Germany 😳
yep! It's right out of the fascist handbook. Dividing the nation and indoctrinating children is how evil people take power. It's exactly what the US did with native people and N**is did in Germany.
more direct than ever before! they used to try to be clever about it, and you had to admire the attempt.
now it's just absolutely DEMANDING you to not think.
What also jumped out at me is how much the lesson plans just said, "Discuss." Discuss in groups? Discuss as a class? Discuss in pairs and then share out in a class? I assume they mean discuss as a class, which functionally means 1-5 students actually participating/answering questions and the rest of the class staring blankly hoping they don't get called on. Pair that with way too long videos, especially for young students, and you've got a recipe for a class full of restless, bored kids. Oh, and worksheets. How fun and engaging.
They're actively working to make kids dumber; which is probably the point.
Dumb people are more likely to click ads.
The L in prageru stands for learning
Oh, it's absolutely the point.
People who think critically are their kryptonite.
As a former Texan public school student, I regret to inform PU that teenagers like watching videos in class for reasons completely unrelated to educational retention. It's a chance to turn their brains off and not care for half an hour. Maybe check their phones.
I was a teenager once also and I can confirm. Maybe someone should create fun, thought provoking content, specifically for students languishing through 27 minute (mins) videos.
Speak for yourself.
Can confirm, ex-teenager here, the only videos the classes I was in ever paid attention to were:
1) that time the history teacher had us watch that medieval movie with the "We Will Rock You" jousting tourney spectators (he said the anachronism was bang-on about the vibe, peasants did sing songs they thought were kickass while waiting for the show).
2) the time for all clearing an exam with 80%+ in the entire class, we got rewarded with the teacher's home videos of her adorable cat being a menace at her husband's ankles and kitty's valliant attempts at ambushing that poor man's ankles.
PU is entirely aware of that. That is exactly the goal they are hoping to achieve.
@@harrybudgeiv349 i could usually sit through videos if they were nice but my brother in christ, go watch an entire prager u video, in it's entirety without looking away or getting distracted
as a student, this typa shit makes me so mad lmao. everyone deserves access to a good education, and the way that all these conservatives are tryna turn school into a place of pure obedience and indoctrination instead of a place where students are given opportunities to actually learn is such a grave injustice.
this type of thing has already happened to a lesser degree in a good bit a schools teaching the millennial generation...... taught a whole lot of obedience and not much else....
Condolences. That said, I’ll add that school has more or less always, to varying extents, been that: a tool to inculcate future workers under capitalism. This view of it is complicated by a lot of the teachers having much more benign ideology about it all. Alas, though, that’s basically what the system is for. :’(
As opposed to the current Leftist indoctrination centers that modern schools have become?
The Prussian system's final form it seems
"Iron Law of Woke Projection never misses."
Would it be offensive to say as an outsider that America is becoming heavily fascist?
Not offensive at all. As an American, I completely agree in many ways. The only thing is that I have a hard time telling how many Americans actually believe what the Right spews, since Right Wing propaganda takes up so much political discourse. They’ve muddied the sociopolitical waters for years now, and I hate it so much here.
However, I am hopeful that these are actually the (very loud) dying screeches of conservative thought. One day, these fascists and bigots will be right up in the history books along side the people that were pro-segregation. Millennials and the other younger generations are generally more progressive than ever, and society is moving on without those bigoted losers. It’s got them scared (and it’s got Right Wing grifters making bank off of that fear).
I think by any definition of fascism America is becoming heavily fascist.
yes and no. People are increasingly LOUD in thier fascism, but the large majority of the vote is still DEFINITELY not. There's absurd voter suppression with everything from wild gerrymandering to baseless locking people up with minimum charges to remove thier right to vote. And despite that, they're kept in power only by making people so TIRED they don't come out. Even in the heart of red territory like I am, where I could count the blue victories in the last century on my fingers, if everyone actually came out to vote it would still be solidly blue. Amid many anti-trans laws being passed, actual SUPPORT for those laws was lower than ever, with only around a quarter to a third in favor.
So it's less "Becoming fascist," more "the fascism already present realized it's dying and is trying to recover with increasingly loud desparation." They're gaining more power with thier bold plays, making the law itself more in line with thier ideals, but it's to try and refill thier dwindling numbers.
@@carolineholland5841 This response is so well detailed, and I thank you for taking the time to type it.
@@carolineholland5841 This is such a good way to put _exactly_ how I feel living in America at the moment
As a teacher, I was not expecting a great break down of lesson plans and blooms of all things popping up in my “play next” video today. Lovely channel find, thanks!
They want to expose their brand to kids, but they don't respect children as people enough to do it right. A kid who goes through the lesson will associate PragerU as that company that made that boring video in school when they scroll by it on youtube later that day (or sneaking on the phone while the movie is playing) and avoid it. Kids know brands and remember that stuff. Toymakers have known that for decades now.
That bit of them saying the previous contents that they scripted, taped, edited, and published "isn't real" and "does not exist" was pretty funny.
Says a lot about them, tbh. Unironically some 1984 type shit. "We got rid of it because it made us look bad therefore it no longer exists"
I'm not American, and I'm sure that PragerU will never find its way into my old schools, but this makes me even more thankful that I had teachers that cared about what they were teaching and encouraged discussion and interaction with the content, not this lazy slop that will no doubt continue to be churned out by pragerU.
Trust me. if it's not prageru it's liberal propaganda. which if your not american you might be fine with. But it's literally ruining kids.
I love watching your little lovebug of a kitty cat. It's almost like he's worried about you ranting to what looks like no one, and he is trying to calm you down with nuzzles, showing his belly, and slow-blinking at you.
The evident lack of effort/research put into their education materials seems to betray exactly what they think of education. It's not actually for education, or to get kids to think, it's to tell them what to think. They think there's just nothing to it, teaching kids is easy, know stuff and tell it to the kids, nothing else needed. They think teaching is trivial. No wonder they disrespect public schools, advocate for cutting funding, and refuse to acknowledge the desperate needs of teachers for A) more compensation B) increased access and materials, and so much more.
You basically just said that in the video. Oops! You are exceptionally good at leading an audience 😉
@@Im0nJupiter,
Objection! I already had that bias.. she couldn't lead me to a conclusion I was already had.
As someone who works at daycare, Prager U is a The Spot from Across The Spider-verse to me. Something that seems like nothing at first, a silly little joke if you will, and is now gradually becoming a large threat😳. Education and learning should be speaking to children. Prager U makes orders and demands at children.
LOL, I feel the same way
I'm very glad you avoided discussing the politics. Too many people think that criticism of PragerU and conservatives in general is just "both sides are gonna disagree". But honestly people need to understand that these conservatives aren't just giving different opinions, they're providing substandard crap as an educational service. It's one thing to have different political views, it's another to just be crap.
Wdym ? PragerU lessons are top tier level of crap, not your average crap.
The left-wing equivalent, I reckon, would be if you let Ward Churchill or Caleb Maupin design an elementary school curriculum. There's bias, and then there's egregious bias (or outright deception).
@@dinosaysrawr Add a few pagan woo "I don't see color" white savior tumblr witches to mirror the Evangelical batshittery I've noticed to round up your metaphor.
@@dinosaysrawr I'd argue Caleb Maupin, despite his communist-sounding rhetoric, is actually far right, given his authoritarian and socially-conservative views. He openly praised Donald Trump for chrissakes
Honestly both sides encourage you to turn off your brain to cheer whatever they support.
God, can you imagine if any other brand tried that? Like if there was a Coca-Cola curriculum?
Another worrying aspect is that showing kids Ben Shapiro and Michael Knowles videos in class will certainly kickstart some of them down the alt-right pipeline by normalizing those personalities.
Or they will get bored out of their minds and never want anything to do with PU ever again
I can see it now "Ben Shapiro the Science Hero" and then it just degrades into Air Conditioning solving Climate Change.
I was very alarmed on hearing this news. However, ironically, these lessons seem to be so awful that it will likely have a net negative impact. Teachers who are even slightly competent will give this a pass, and teachers who do use the curriculum will mostly simply poison the well for the content covered.
This video didn’t go into politics. However, it’s surprisingly unwise timing for the gov of FL. It’s likely this material will be used where parents are paying attention, and aren’t sympathetic to the agenda of PU. Those constituents can make an awful stink for the presidential hopeful there just as we approach the first primaries.
Not that I’m sympathetic. Let him cook. 😅
@@irenafarm I concur. This is precisely the type of thing Reich DeathKlantis and Greg Abbott would support. Of course, it's no less disturbing.
@@thomash.schwed3662 What is Reich DeathKlantis? I've never heard of that. Sounds like a black metal band.
Another reason why PragerU might want its material in schools is that it's one less lesson covering anything that could be considered "woke." Their lessons are educational as far as they prevent kids from being "misinformed" by liberal bias, or so they would say.
In other words preventing kids from learning that not everyone is born straight and will either realize it and be forced in the closet or come out and most likely be bullied for it
Absolutely - the purpose isn't to be a better resource on merit or quality, but to take up attention, space, and time away from better things. "Hey here's a free thing, why do we pay for those other ones?"
Also if you can make your children as uneducated and unskilled as possible, they can vote Republican.
In other words, they are claiming facts and critical thinking are liberal bias.
It’s up to the teachers whether to incorporate these lessons. Teachers who would use this material would already have an anti-progressive agenda.
Reminds me of pedagogy of the oppressed, in which students are seen as containers that need to be filled by which they are seen as proper students as long as they remain subservient to the teacher / the lesson. It also really bothers me that they use the word appreciate so much, I hate the idea of telling student how they should feel about a topic, we should allow them to engage with the subject and make their own conclusions with it.
But that would be encouraging independent and critical thinking and we know the powers that be don’t want that lol.
Brazil Mentioned?
I am also a education major, but it's focused in biology and in Brazil, I love how they started the objectives with the verb "understand" when we are told so many times to not use "understand", because you can't to assess if a student understood something, better verbs would be: define, record, cite, exemplify, enumerate, etc. All verbs that you can see your students doing! I am just in a few minutes in and so much is wrong!
Edit: oh dear lord, the rest of the lesson is just as bad and the questions don't make any sense!
Brazil 🔥🔥 sepultura 😈
Cat friend sitting there, slightly annoyed - "why are you waving your hands around, use it to pet me already!"
Cat friend does not approve of PragerU.
My guess is that a qualified educator wrote the promotional summary about how this was going to work, but a bunch of entirely unqualified people wrote literally everything else. This feels to me like marketing Snake Oil: the pitch is great, but the product is a scam. However, if the goal is to make a list of things you want kids to believe, then force them to sit and listen to the list, memorize it, and quiz them to make sure they remember (which is the essence of all the high school and college classes I've taken that were essentially a series of boring lectures), then this is the perfect vehicle. You can slot anything into that. It sounds like a propaganda machine for impressionable children that will believe what they're told if adults say it. Thankfully, Florida's government is trying to prevent indoctrination of children, rather than replace it with their own content, because that would be sneaky and wrong.
I worked for a huge textbook company for a while as a proofreader. Books went through at least 5 rounds of proofing. The first two were essentially editing: the first one looking for potential mistakes in content, done by an expert in the field; the second by an expert in the English language to check if the language was clear and age-appropriate. After that, two different proofreaders went over the text to find errors (of course many would already have been caught, it’s not like the first two people looking at the text were unable to spot a spelling mistake) like misspellings, capitalizations, punctuation, etc. Another person would do the same thing, this time also checking for layout and pagination (especially after you make changes you may end up with things not fitting on the page quite right). And the last person would do a final check of print proofs, often also comparing to another regional edition (for example, Texas has long wanted to be special and have their own standards) to make sure that things that were supposed to be the same across editions (I did math books, so for example if the same problem was in the Texas and the Minnesota edition, they should match in content - because sometimes different editors will make different changes and then things look unnecessarily inconsistent if one book had a solution that was, say 3.5 or 3.4 because calculations were done to a different decimal before rounding).
I am sharing this because it is absolutely unacceptable, in my view, to create widely-distributed lesson plans that have spelling errors, inconsistencies, etc… When people use these as learning materials, the quality needs to be above-average and as close to perfect as possible. I will usually find 5 or 6 misspellings in a novel, but I don’t expect to find any in a textbook - I think in my whole career as a student I found 2 or 3, and I not only have a Bachelor’s, but I did a few extra years of College-level studying because I started in Italy, then went to Holland, and ended up in the States, so my work from other countries didn’t transfer.
One of the things that I find most distasteful about extreme individualism is this idea that every individual or company gets to reinvent the wheel and do things their way. “Oh, these massive educational companies spend thousands of hours editing and proofing books, and it costs tens of thousands of dollar per book! We can easily do it for 10% of that by just hiring one writer and one editor/proofreader who will work for minimum wage!” And they don’t even think about the fact that it isn’t wasteful to spend so much money on making sure to get it right. Ugh.
hi, I know this was commented a while ago but, if I may, I would like to ask you for advice in entering the editing field.
It's extremely charitable of you to give them the benefit of the doubt that they care in the *_slightest_* about the quality if children's education.
if children if children's education if if??
@@Coffeeisnecessarynowpepper One typo. You’re acting like the fucking apocalypse is in motion.
They really just want middle schoolers to have to see Ben Shapiro and Michael Knowles in their classes.
It's also important to note that this shows how much Prager U simply doesn't value kids as humans by their own rights.
Conservatives don't believe children *have* rights, fundamentally. *Parents* are the rights-holders.
They value them more when they are fetuses
@@Random_dud31they don't value fetuses, else they would be for abortion. They stand for oppressing women.
@@Random_dud31at least we give them value
@@necropolistc6357We value them a lot more than you. Children that is, not fetuses. We value them so much that we don’t want to force a baby to be born to two parents who literally don’t want them! We want them to have good lives!
Right wingers like you on the other hand would sooner force a rape victim to give birth to a child that she can’t support, doesn’t want and is at risk of harming due to trauma, to you, the quality of life for the child or mother doesn’t matter, as long as they are alive, forgive me but I don’t think that’s giving anybody value, let alone kids.
It would be indoctrination if it wasn't so boring
sadly, bad indoctrination is indoctrination. It's meant to reinforce indoctrination and incuriosity in a home that has OAN running in the background. It's meant to make kids questioning their parent's politics more difficult.
A boring dystopia
I think the biggest problem is looking at PragerU's materials as if they were educational when they are indoctrination
No, they are fighting indoctrination.
@@richardtaylor6187they fight indoctrination with indoctrination? That doesn't make sense
And modern curriculum hasn't been indoctrination for the last 50+ years? Bless your heart.
@@gumbihilt1333 I'm willing to bet you don't know what indoctrination is
@rayman11 anyone can look up a definition. But I'd be willing to bet you lack the wisdom and critical thinking skills to apply that definition, or recognize it being applied before your very eyes 🤷♂️
As a person who works in education, I love seeing Blooms taxonomy referenced! Great video, thank you
As someone who teaches 7th Grade Social Studies, I would never used PragerU. I'm working a Master's in American Government and History, and their materials are just so historically inaccurate, bending and twisting the truth to serve their own ends instead of an educational end.
They don't want any critical questions asked or answered. You hit the nail on the head when you said indoctrination. You can't ignore their politics unfortunately, because that's what they want taught - their opinions, not facts and certainly not critical thinking. Students are going to sit there and absorb and regurgitate what they saw and heard.
As a new teacher about to start in September, those lesson plans were horrendous! The learning objectives were vague, the formative assessments (checks for understanding) were not described at all, the standards were missing… I could go on! But you summarized it perfectly! All Prager U cares about, it seems, is getting their brand in classrooms. We were all mesmerized by their blatant attempts to indoctrinate kids through their “rewrites” of history that, I for one, overlooked that it was just capitalism all along…
The real question is, “How do we shut down Pager U?”
Because, let’s be honest, it’s gotten to the point where it needs to be shut down.
People have been sayin' that about your bee whole for a long time. That it's like a truck stop but strictly for Felching bee whole's and servicing glory hole's in the bathrooms.
@@jennyanydots2389I keep seeing your comments and, honestly, you appear to be mentally ill
@@jennyanydots2389you seem really obsessed with mentioning felching... I'm not judging your weekend plans but maybe find some new insults
@@MojaveMoron Good one. Too much of a coward to come up with a real insult so you go the tired to death passive-aggressive "i'm not saying but i'm saying...." format. Ha... you basically just made fun of yourself with that lame ass insult attempt. I'm simply trolling in that above comment, not a realy insult... you tried to directly insult me and it just came off as pathetic. Damn... total failure (probably not just here either, wal mart cart wrangler for life I bet!!)
@@NG-cf7zhits kinda sad to read through tbh
This actually makes me feel better. My immediate worry was that Florida would be using *effective* far-right indoctrination on grade school kids, but these lesson plans are...not that.
while it migh look bland, its whats said at 26:18, they want children to be obediant, bored and uncurious. that makes an "apolitical" adult that can easily do what theyre told because nationalistic values are normative and "whats best" (to not mention far right bigoted thinking, but its redundant already). so it is dangerous.
@@charmingnarcisse While it might succeed at making them bored & uncurious, i have a feeling that telling children to watch a nearly half hour video of two people talking will make them the exact opposite of "obedient".
Illl never forgive pager U for making that poor kitty miss out on pets because mom is so angry about terrible lessons
"in a way that doesn't feel like indoctrination" is where you went wrong. Prager U's idea of education *is* indoctrination.
Everything is indoctrination, it just depends which values you want your child to have. It is technically indoctrination to tell your child that murder is bad, because that is putting something into their head.
But in anycase some indoctrination is bad, most is good, PragerU's is probably unethical at the least because why would they need to show political icons to children? Children shouldn't be involved in politics if they can help it.
@@Ajia_No_Envy indoctrination is depositing information uncritically. it’s true that a lot of historical education, especially pre critical theory and more modern educational philosophy, does qualify but it’s not nearly as broad or applicable as that
@@Ajia_No_Envy It's only indoctrination if you teach them not to question it (so all school). But actual education can teach various points of view.
prager literally verbally admits what they do is "indoctrination".
@@ItHadToBeSaid I knew American schools were shyte but I didn't know they went "don't question it" instead of "here's more resources, go wild, if you have questions I'm always available between classes".
Like, in my little bumfuck nowhere bumpkin 300 people village grade school I moved to up here in America's hat, we could always go "why, why, why, what if, what it", even if the answer we got was more of a "this is where you want to look" than an actual explanation (because time).
The only thing I was "indoctrinated" to have is shit like how to write, read, count, and then basic grammar and those cursed multiplication tables.
Literally everything else was on the table even if the answer was "look it up in the library we've got a few books on that one".
It works something like that in the US, right? Right????
Thank you so much. I taught 7th-8th grade English in rural Utah until I quit to gender transition, something that my school would absolutely have had issue with. It's so nice to see a voice that can use concise language to explain why Prager Kids content makes me so angry even if viewed purely as an educator.
I work as a teacher in sweden. PragerU's lesson plans are not made for teachers, its made for administrators and parents.
I mean that is what it has predominately been made for in the past, for right wing “home schooling” lessons for the most insufferable parents you’ve ever met to force upon their kids when they get home from school, and online videos for right wing RUclips. It’s also primarily a “think tank” which is effectively just a fancy way of saying “political tool” for the oil industry and Christian dogma (this isn’t theory, it’s literally a major part of their founding and funding)
Seeing their lesson on the Federalist Papers is maddening. My master's degree was in US History and I focus specifically on this time period. The fact that they're acting as if the Federalist Papers are official documents, and it's not just PragerU doing this, leaves me with migraines.
i read some of them for my american pop culture class i took and omfg most of them are just rambles i have no idea how they got so popular lmao its just all venting
Really enjoyed this, I've always been curious what PragerU crapped out for schools since they are so arrogant and dismissive of children's needs and autonomy.
Thank you! 💜
I didn't even know this existed
Every public speaker should be mandated by law to have a -cat- Public Speaking Pet™ that watches their hand movements and tries to snuggle with them in the middle of work
Does a snake count? Mine likes to snuggle and follow my hands too.
@@sophiedowney1077 changed
@@pungoblin9377 😊
I’m also surprised at how bad these are given how much money these people have. Like, are all of Florida’s educational materials this bad, or did PragerU just get approved for political reasons???
Political Reasons ($$$)....
I spent one year in college in Florida. I noped out and came right back to New Jersey because the stuff that COLLEGE was teaching in Florida was stuff I learned between MIDDLE SCHOOL and HIGH SCHOOL. It was absolutely a waste of time and money. Just avoid Florida...and Texas...basically the whole southern states in general, really.
@@ChristopherSadlowski They call it flyover country for a reason.
@@ItWasSaucerShaped, you should be aware that the term “flyover country” literally means the part of the US that planes fly over when they travel from NYC or DC to LA. Neither FL nor TX are normally on those routes.
@@ChristopherSadlowskijust curious cus im currently attending college in florida, what were some things they taught there that’s middle/high school stuff in nj?
As someone who used to work in classrooms and actually ran a literacy program, this hurts my heart and soul. These kids are being deprived, and the teachers are being cheated. This sort of material is basically designed to fail.
Bingo
When I was in middle school, every year the social studies teachers would do a “Cold War Simulation” where groups of students (across all grades) would be a certain country and “be part of the Cold War”. This was not only very engaging and interesting, it taught us more about what happened during the Cold War than if we had watched videos and taken tests. This is what education should be.
Did you build pretend nukes?
@@neontangle11 yes actually
@@ghosted_raven8846 what'd you use to build em?
@@neontangle11 we just bought and had them. we didn’t have to build them or anything.
@@ghosted_raven8846 ah I see
PragerU lesson plans in a nutshell: Watch the video... consume... give us that ad revenue
18:06 If I was in six grade and I had to do that lesson, I would be bored to tears. That is just insulting to their intelligence. Like I get it they're 12, but they should still be challenged. It really shows Prageru's inexperience in education and how their content isn't designed for learning but as propaganda. They don't want students to discuss the topic in class and develop critical thinking skills. They just want them to absorb information and not ask questions.
I think this kind of education, which favors the uncurious and compliant, does another important job: it washes out the curious, interested, and less pliable. Which then in turn insures that the lower classes are gonna be compliant, because their children who wash out won’t have resources to go to a private school or get engaging homeschooling.
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In a lesson about the Statue of Liberty, I would include material about why she comes from France, and what the French and American revolutions have in common. But what do I know, I’m just a teacher. 🤷😏
That’s probably in the video. I believe the disconnect between suggested activities, and the lesson objectives, is that they genuinely expect that JUST the video will accomplish the objectives. The teacher is only there to cue up the vid and hit start. That’s some peak disrespect.
And then you could have an activity where students create their own fictional country that helped the US during the war--or maybe is friends with the us for other reasons--and to create/draw their own gift to the US that represents freedom and the 2 countries' bonds. That would actually be fun and engaging.
Hopefully, those who are indoctrinated by this material will find a way to travel to Paris so they can see another copy of her. Then they might be curious enough to research the truth.
"You can't just describe everything that's wrong with PragerU WITHOUT addressing their politics-"
Zoe: F***ing watch me.
Key word in that quote is "everything." She criticized them from an educational stand point, put that isn't everything there is to criticize them about.
This is what I love so much about this video. It plays fair. PragerU still being accpeted in Florida is still wild though
yeah it really was like
prageru: you can't attack us because we took our video down!
zoe: hold my orange cat
Came for finding out why PragerU is awful.
Stayed for the orange cat being adorable on your couch. He must be well loved, that purr is LOUD
The topic of PragerU needs to be discussed more often. Kudos to you for picking it apart in an engaging and unique way.
People have already criticized the politics of PragerU, so it's refreshing to see someone tackle down the other aspect of it, while doing so in a calm and respectful way. It's good to know that there are people like you out there who aspire to be real teachers, and I hope you succeed in educating the future generations of your country. 🙌
Analyzing a lesson plan from decades of failed public education teaching methodologies is always a honest and successful practice. Keep up the good work. A really great teacher would have a student of hers critique these lessons, but....well.. enough said.
@@davidEdwardsTalkwhat
@@davidEdwardsTalk From someone who knows you never went to public grade school I would like to know when and how you learned how to critique teachers.
I was a GED tutor, teaching the students that were failed by the one size fits all methodology. I was trained as a trainer and used Instructional Systems Design in a former job.
@@davidEdwardsTalk I see. As interested as I may be in the methods and reasons for the hows and whys of 5 to 8 yr olds taking GED class, I feel that one of the methods descrbed above could stand some chance of sucess. The other method gives a real hung over substitute teacher on a rainy friday afternoon vibe.