A scene from a PraegerU video.
"Florida's Department of Education has approved the classroom use of material from the Prager University Foundation, a conservative group that produces videos that distort science, history, gender and other topics," reported E&E News (August 7, 2023). Although the videos have been approved for use only in social studies classrooms for younger students, there is concern that climate-change-denial videos may harm climate change education in the state.
"Climate scientists long ago determined that fossil fuel use is driving rapid global warming and pushing the planet toward dangerous tipping points. Most states center their climate change curriculum around that consensus," E&E News explained. "Only a small number of researchers with legitimate academic credentials doubt the consensus science, and PragerU videos feature many of them."
NCSE Deputy Director Glenn Branch told E&E News that the state's approval in effect publicizes the availability of the climate-change-denial videos to sympathetic teachers. Moreover, he added, even teachers who want to teach climate change accurately could feel coerced to do otherwise: with the state's imprimatur of the PragerU videos, there's a risk that "people are going to be pressuring [teachers] into using them."
