The South Carolina Board of Education is considering whether it’s appropriate for public schools to use PragerU videos in classrooms after concerns were raised by teachers, parents, and students.
Emails between PragerU and the state Department of Education, dating from July to October, were released to the public after a records request. However, these emails don’t provide clear details about the partnership.
The public first learned about the partnership when state Superintendent Ellen Weaver appeared in a PragerU video in September, encouraging teachers to use the videos, which upset many people.
South Carolina is the eighth state to approve the use of these videos in schools, following states like Florida, Texas, and Arizona. The videos are optional for teachers, but they weren’t reviewed through the usual approval process for educational materials, such as textbooks, which typically involves teachers and administrators reviewing the content.
The State Board of Education did not approve this partnership, and department officials said it’s common for the agency to provide teachers with materials that don’t require board approval.
However, Board member Beverly Frierson expressed concern about the content of the videos, calling it potentially biased, and asked her colleagues to review some of the videos before the next meeting.
State Rep. Jermaine Johnson, who requested the public records, also raised concerns, stating that he didn’t receive clear answers about how the partnership began or what it involves. He speculated that some details might be in personal emails that aren’t subject to public records laws.
One email chain from July mentioned that PragerU offered free financial literacy curriculum to the state, but the list of videos later provided by PragerU covered many other subjects like history, civics, and geography. The emails didn’t clarify how the focus shifted from financial literacy to broader topics.
There were also concerns about one particular PragerU video that was criticized for its content related to Columbus Day, which raised alarm among teachers, especially due to a firearm-related image on the speaker’s t-shirt. Despite promises from Weaver to remove the video, it remained on the list months later.
The controversy continues, with some teachers questioning whether they should consider these videos as approved materials without an official list from the Department of Education.