By Daniel Greenfield August 21, 2023 @ Sultan Knish Blog
Florida has been falsely accused of “book bans” for pulling graphic pornography and racism from schools. A Florida school district was sued for
keeping, “All Boys Aren’t Blue”, which features lines such as “he
reached his hand down and pulled out my d____”, away from kids.
But now the Left has discovered educational materials in Florida schools that it wants to ban.
Outrage, condemnations, petitions and threats greeted the revelation that Florida had allowed schools to use PragerU materials if they wanted to. After months of accusing Florida of banning books, the media and leftist activists mounted a crusade to ban PragerU from schools.
NPR, which had attacked Florida for keeping graphic pornography and racism away from kids, breathlessly condemned the state’s educational system for potentially allowing videos which correctly state that “slavery was part of life all over the world” and that “the planet has been warming and cooling since prehistoric times”.
The show quoted a PTA president blustering, “I do not want my kids exposed to this – absolutely not.” while its reporter worried that “no Florida school district has yet announced plans to use PragerU Kids videos, but they can’t stop teachers from showing them, either.”
The leftists were for book bans before they were against them, and now are for them again.
After insisting that teachers should not be prevented from discussing their sex lives with kids or secretly transitioning them to the opposite sex, NPR is worried that there’s nothing to stop Florida educators from showing a video about American history.
Among those condemning the PragerU curriculum was the vice president of the Florida Freedom to Read project which had attacked schools for jettisoning ‘Lawn Boy’ which included lines such as, “I was ten years old, but it’s true. I put Doug Goble’s d___ in my mouth.”
Freedom to read means teaching kids about 10-year-old boys performing sex acts, but not that slavery was commonplace in the 19th century or that the climate has always been changing.
“Of all the PragerU propaganda you’ve seen, this might be the worst. Frederick Douglass takes a dig at BLM while praising the founding fathers as abolitionists and calling the Constitution a ‘glorious liberty document,”’ David Heath, a white former CNN reporter, agonized. “Florida is letting schools play this stuff.”
Florida is letting schools teach that the constitution is a “glorious liberty document”, but not provide 10-year-olds with sex manuals. What’s happening to our educational system?
In Tallahassee, black church leaders who, despite their alleged religiosity, are fine with pushing LGBTQ sex on kids, protested outside the state’s Department of Education.
The pastors accused Gov. DeSantis of “wickedness” and “dark work”, and complained that PragerU videos (correctly) “depicts the Founding Fathers as abolitionists” and “states white people led the effort to abolish slavery.”
The Rev. Dr. Joe Parramore (He/Him), who runs a “safe, LGBT welcoming and affirming ministry”, suggested that PragerU videos could lead to a cutoff in federal funding. “We cannot stand idly by and continue to allow the atrocities of a dictatorial leadership of a scared white nationalist DeSantis to inflict harm on the citizens and students of our state,” he ranted.
CAIR joined the attack by accusing PragerU of “Islamophobic tropes” over an old video of ex-Muslim activist Ayann Hirsi Ali who had been forced to flee Muslim death threats and the factual statement that “there is no moderate Islam.” That quote actually came from Turkey’s Islamist dictator who had argued, “Islam cannot be either ‘moderate’ or ‘not moderate. ‘ Islam can only be one thing.” And CAIR has certainly spent its existence proving that.
The final member of Florida’s anti-PragerU coalition was an unindicted co-conspirator in funding Hamas. As the Department of Justice noted, “the evidence at trial linked CAIR leaders to Hamas, a specially designated terrorist organization, and CAIR was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the case.” CAIR offers a guide for educators and no one objects to that because leftist educators prefer Hamas to PragerU.
While Florida has shown no signs of retreating from allowing teachers to use the PragerU curriculum (as they do supplemental materials from many other organizations), the New Hampshire Board of Ed postponed a vote on allowing a financial literacy course by PragerU on such controversial topics as how to read pay stubs and how compound interest works.
Radicals from Occupy New Hampshire Seacoast to the local AFT-NH teachers’ union rallied to oppose what even opponents admitted was “a non- or less-controversial course on financial literacy”. The Boston Globe weighed in without offering a specific criticism of the course materials.
The two Democrats running for governor, Manchester Mayor Joyce Craig and Executive Councilwoman Cinde Warmington, warred with each other to warn about the threat of PragerU.
Craig claimed that “PragerU does not reflect New Hampshire values” without clarifying how the educational group’s materials failed to align with the state’s motto of “live free or die”. The controversial mayor’s administration had previously approved COVID relief money to be spent on a high school drag show. That does reflect Craig’s version of New Hampshire values.
Warmington wildly warned that PragerU teaching students how to calculate their taxes would “undermine the bedrock of our democracy”. Democracy can’t survive if kids learn to add. That may explain why leftist public school systems have destroyed math education.
The attacks on PragerU are short on substance and heavy on alarmism. One podcast denounces it as “far-right” and a “right-wing propaganda machine” guilty of a “reactionary political agenda” and “a regressive vision of society”. All of this is a repetitive leftist way of saying that it’s conservative. None of the critiques of PragerU get any less hypocritical.
Leftists who are obsessed with indoctrinating students accuse PragerU of indoctrination. The same activists who claim to be fighting against book bans also want to ban PragerU.
According to teachers’ unions, the media and radical activists, racism, porn and terrorism belong in schools, but financial literacy and the constitution don’t. Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine. Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation.
Thank you for reading.
