PragerU Kids Director of Outreach Jill Simonian spoke to The Gateway Pundit last week to discuss the organization’s recent partnership with the Arizona Department of Education to welcome educational resources into K-12 public and charter school classrooms across the state.
“PragerU’s materials offer an ‘alternative voice’ to leftist-run institutions that push Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), Critical Race Theory (CRT), and the sexualization of children,” according to a press release from PragerU Kids announcing the new partnership in Arizona, which joins Oklahoma, Florida, Montana, and New Hampshire in providing honest lessons in history, government, capitalism, and American values in K-12 classrooms.
PragerU CEO Marissa Streit said, “We want institutions, kindergarten through college… to have an option where, if they don’t want to teach CRT and they want to teach an alternative, if they want to level the playing field, they have at least another turnkey educational piece that they can use.”
With 10% of states now offering these resources, Jill Simonian says, “our goal is to have all 50 states,” including liberal strongholds like New York and California!
The Gateway Pundit recently reported on PragerU’s partnership with Arizona to welcome PragerU Kids resources into Arizona public and charter school classrooms and fight back against woke indoctrination.
The initiative, led by Horne and several GOP Arizona State Legislators, including State Rep. Jake Hoffman, will provide educational shows, videos, worksheets, and magazines to parents and teachers across the state.
Additionally, PragerU is well known for its five-minute video series, which provides short clips on some of the world’s biggest issues and American politics from the best minds in America. While these are not included in the PragerU Kids curriculum, Simonian told The Gateway Pundit that PragerU will soon offer five-minute biographical videos on every President of The United States throughout history, which can be incorporated into high school history lessons.
This will also likely lead to more youth exposure to PragerU’s five-minute video clips with real history lessons instead of the revised history taught in public schools. “We’re looking to always fill the gap of what isn’t being taught and what shouldn’t be taught,” said Simonian.
Along with real civics and history lessons, Simonian says PragerU Kids is also focused on bringing financial literacy lessons, which are sorely lacking in public education, to students in schools nationwide. In some Arizona schools, a financial math course, which provides lessons on budgeting, investing, saving for retirement, and the credit system, has solely been offered as an elective substitute for high school seniors who opted out of taking calculus or pre-calculus. In this author’s experience, the financial math course was only offered to students who had already decided not to attend a University or who were failing out of higher math classes.
Why are schools leaving one of the only real-world lessons out of the mandated curriculum?
Simonian discussed the importance of PragerU kids in classrooms, how they will restore educational freedom for parents and students, and the organization’s future plans with The Gateway Pundit correspondent Jordan Conradson.
Watch the full interview below:
CONRADSON: Can you talk more about how you guys plan to introduce this into the classroom and what it will do for education across the country?
SIMONIAN: We are super excited about this announcement in Arizona. First of all, I just want to start off by saying that PragerUKids.com is totally free for parents, teachers, administrators, educators, grandparents, kids, and anyone to watch on our website for free; subscribing is free. So we’ve been operating for almost three years now. We have nine different series of shows that celebrate patriotism, teach civics, financial literacy, teach goodness, good character, our American values, hard work, responsibility, self-reliance, equality under God, all of those things, and to be now approved as supplemental education materials for Arizona, as well, as I like to say 10% of the states in the United States–we’re also approved for supplemental use in Oklahoma, Florida, Montana, New Hampshire, and then Arizona–we’re thrilled to be able to expand educational freedom because as parents, I’m a mom, I want to know with full transparency what my kids are learning, and PragerU Kids does that. By being approved by state education systems, we are able to be included in the classroom to teach about our great country without teachers having to be fearful that they’re going to get reprimanded.
CONRADSON: Of course, you’re facing pushback from leftists, and leftist politicians saying that you guys are teaching fake history. I’m sure that teachers are going to hop on board with that and actually tell their students that. I had a few social justice warrior teachers when I was in K through 12, who would tell me, “No, don’t listen to that. Listen to me.” How do you plan to fight against that?
SIMONIAN: Well, the plan is through parents. We are in a time in history now, where all of us moms and dads are really understanding, and this is something that I never understood. I have two young children in their formative years, and I never understood that my rights as a parent to direct the upbringing of my own children was fundamental. It’s part of the fabric of our history, it is outlined and interpreted in our Constitution that parents have the fundamental right to direct the education and upbringing of our children. And what we have done so far in partnering with different state education departments is to be approved as supplemental, I mean, literally giving an option. And we’ve done this because we’re serving the parents in those states, in those compromised, and dare I say, sometimes corrupt school districts, we’re serving those parents to say: Hey, take this, take this to your school board, take this to your administration, take this to your even private schools, and really make the case that as a mom, I want this to be included without being pushed aside and without being unfairly reprimanded. And really our plan is to really, it’s always been to partner with the parents, because parents more and more as we see, the impossible is happening, that parents really are gaining ground in making sure that our public education institutions serve us a little bit better. And you know, this problem of corruption, I always discuss this that this problem of corruption in education did not happen overnight. I mean, it took decades and decades. And so, we just have to have that mindset of this is not something that is going to be course corrected overnight. This is a long haul in front of us. It might take a decade or two to course correct. And so we just have to have faith that the parents are going to partner, and we’re going to be with them to serve them to give them the materials to do so.
CONRADSON: When I was in high school, I actually watched a lot of the PragerU adult videos. I was very interested in learning real history. My personal favorite was Carol Swain’s “The Inconvenient Truth About The Democratic Party.” Do you have any plans to try to introduce PragerU into high school classrooms?
SIMONIAN: Well, I think that’s part of the magic of our materials being approved, is that many of our five-minute videos—so we have the PragerU kids videos that really target a lot of our younger youngest learners, and the focuses there are good character, American values, history, and then we move into middle school that we’ve created a few series dedicated to teaching about civics, how our system of government works, what our rights are, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, you know, all those things. And we also have financial literacy because that’s not being taught in too many schools, and that’s something that should be taught. So, we’re looking to always fill the gap of what isn’t being taught and what shouldn’t be taught. For our high schoolers, financial literacy and civics education, of course, is always an ongoing need. We see that more than ever now with the test scores and the data that we see from across the country about how, you know, less than half of kids show proficiency in civics and financial literacy. But for the high school, in particular, our five-minute videos last year took on a very ambitious project, and the five-minute videos are not necessarily a part of the PragerU Kids brand. But there are five-minute videos now on every single American president. And to have that type of biological video that is quick, in five minutes, educational, engaging visually, it’s really remarkable because what high schooler now knows anything about, I’ll just say like, you know, President McKinley or President Arthur? I myself don’t know that much, but to have all of those five-minute videos that can technically be included in a high school history class, should the teacher find it useful, should the teacher see fit, should it be warranted through and under an umbrella of academic freedom through that teacher’s eyes, those presidential five-minute videos about each of our presidents can in fact be included.
CONRADSON: I think that all teachers should be playing five-minute videos in class to supplement the lessons that they’re learning, personally. What other plans do you guys have for PragerU Kids moving forward beyond Arizona? Can we expect other states to be added to your roster?
SIMONIAN: Yes, yes, yes, yes. We’re super excited. I am not allowed to talk about the next state that we are forging a partnership with because our CEO is Marissa Streit; PragerU Kids was her brainchild from the beginning. I was one of the first people hired, and Marissa and I did, in fact, develop some of our earliest shows, but PragerU Kids is really her baby, and it’s her vision, and she has been just inexplicably remarkable and doing the impossible in getting PragerU Kids approved in states. And three years ago, when we started, never, ever, ever in our wildest dreams did we ever think, oh, we will one day be approved by state education departments to be included as supplemental materials for the classroom. But here we are with 10% of the states in the United States approving us and partnering with us in that way. And so, our goal is to have all 50 states. And we like to do the impossible at PragerU and PragerU Kids, and we’ve really been dedicated to making headway where we never thought we could make headway before. So, California and New York, although very, very unlikely at this time, who’s to say that we won’t be in California and New York schools, if and when they come knocking in another year or two? Because as a mom in California, more than half of the state’s parents here are really fed up on a ground level on a very foundational level. We are fed up with the corrupt education system. And when California comes knocking in another year or two, saying, please, Education Department allow these materials to be used as supplemental materials should a teacher see fit, we will be here. And I really do believe that is going to happen.
This story originally appeared on TheGateWayPundit
