The Lever - LEVER WEEKLY: Indoctrination Nation

This is Lever Weekly, a recap of our work from the past week. If you only read one email from us all week, this should be it.

Along with a breakdown of our reporting, podcasts, and live events for all subscribers, we are providing paid subscribers with an original column. Along with a breakdown of our reporting, podcasts, and live events for all subscribers, we are providing paid subscribers with an original column. In this week’s piece, The Lever’s Lucy Dean Stockton explains why a decades-long attack on public education paved the way for a conservative propaganda hub’s entry into Florida’s curriculum this fall.

👇 Following is an excerpt of our subscriber-only column, and below that is a recap of all of our other work from the week.

Indoctrination Nation

By Lucy Dean Stockton

In the fall, as nearly three million Florida kids return to public schools with armed guards, book bans, gendered bathroom surveillance, and a moral panic about critical race theory, they’ll find something else new in the classroom: Prager University videos to accompany their lessons.

PragerU, as it’s commonly known, has been producing educational content promoting conservative ideology online for almost 15 years — now, starting with Florida, they’re coming for the nation’s public schools. They want to indoctrinate an entire generation in conservative, reactionary rhetoric — and to do so, they’re taking advantage of a moment that’s been decades in the making. Thanks to the collective forces of neoliberalism and conservative opportunism, our country’s public education system has become the perfect stage for outside actors to wage a culture war.

On this season of our podcast series The Audit, hosts Dave Anthony and Josh Olson explored PragerU’s nefarious educational programming. And they investigated the streaming hub’s “pro-America” kids programming...