Florida adds PragerU climate denial videos to approved syllabus for children up to 11

Content comparing climate activists to Nazis and denying the science of global warming can be used by schools in Florida

Despite its name, Prager University Foundation is a lobby group rather than an academic institution. Content on its PragerU Kids platform, some of which rejects accepted science about climate change, can now be taught to children aged up to 11 in Florida public schools. Picture: David McNew/Getty 

Videos that compare climate activists to Nazis, portray solar and wind energy as environmentally ruinous, and claim that global heating is part of natural long-term cycles will be made available to schoolchildren in Florida, after the state approved their use in its public curriculum.

Slickly made animations by the Prager University Foundation, a conservative group that produces materials on science, history, gender, and other topics widely criticised as distorting the truth, will be allowed to be shown to children from kindergarten up to fifth grade [children aged 10 to 11] after being adopted by Florida’s department of education.

Kansas State University associate Adrienne McCarthy says of the PragerU content: 'It’s propaganda 101. Equating people concerned about climate change with Nazis can have long-term impacts on young, impressionable people.' Picture: k-state.edu

Teachers who use the materials “will not be reprimanded, cannot be pushed back on about it, we are approved on the curriculum”, said Jill Simonian, director of outreach at PragerU Kids, the youth arm of the organisation. “More states are following. Florida — I’m applauding. This is step in the right direction.”

experts who studied the videos and other Prager output warned that many of Florida’s three million public schoolchildren risk being exposed to a form of right-wing indoctrination that conforms to the worldview of the organisation’s funders but bears little resemblance to reality.

Adrienne McCarthy, a researcher at Kansas State University, said: “These videos target very young and impressionable kids with messages of support for fossil fuels and doubts over renewable energy resources — they are trying to grow the next generation of supporters for fossil fuels.”

“It’s propaganda 101. Equating people concerned about climate change with Nazis can have long-term impacts on young, impressionable people. The beliefs PragerU are pushing forward overlap with far-right extremist beliefs. The fear is that they will bring this sort of extremist beliefs into mainstream society.”

Radio talk show host and co-founder of the PragerU advocacy group, Dennis Prager. Picture: Michael Tullberg/Getty

Despite its name, Prager is not an academic institution and does not confer degrees. It is a right-wing advocacy group founded in 2009 that produces various materials including magazines and videos that have been criticised by experts for inaccurate portrayals of slavery and racism in the US.

The group, which has received substantial funding from brothers Dan and Farris Wilks, petroleum industry businessmen, has also been accused of spreading denial of climate science.

Florida, whose governor Ron DeSantis has called climate change “leftwing stuff”, is the first state to adopt Prager videos, although in several other states textbooks pushed by the fossil fuel industry have included references that downplay or deny human-caused global heating.

Michael Mann, a climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, said that the irony in the decision by the DeSantis administration to allow the videos “is that this gambit would make Goebbels himself blush”.

Prof Mann added: “For here we have a politician who regularly trades in antisemitic and racist, misogynistic and homophobic tropes promoting agenda-driven disinformation in place of actual science to further the agenda of the fossil fuel interests funding him and his party.”