Oklahoma Educators Association responds to PragerU
This week, news surfaced that the controversial PragerU group was teaching educational topics to Oklahoma school children. Since its inception, PragerU has been highly divisive and their stance on school curriculum doesn’t look like changing anytime soon. According to PragerU, it is ‘an American 501 nonprofit advocacy group and media organization that creates content promoting conservative viewpoints on various political, economic, and sociological topics.’
In response to PragerU, the OEA (Oklahoma Educators Association) president Katherine Bishop released a statement that claimed that: “PragerU isn’t a legitimate accredited education organization” amongst many other remarks which included terms such as ‘indoctrination’ and ‘deeply concerning’.
This is the first response from OEA after PragerU has gained a foothold on education in Oklahoma. Overall, it will be interesting to see if PragerU responds to the OEA statement which clearly views the organization with contempt. This also highlights the growing divide in the state regarding school education and the teachings such as religion, climate change, and other issues.
Interestingly, this response also highlights that not every school curriculum is exactly the same. It also shows that schools are required to say what they are teaching. In other words, the issue isn’t as simple as some may think and is a fairly nuanced situation.
