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I really wish you hadn't felt the need to take a cheap potshot at the situation in Palestine and Israel. If you want to make a full video laying out your views on it, that would be one thing. But it's way too complicated to be boiled down to a one sentence slogan, and frankly that's the kind of lazy communication you usually deconstruct. I like and admire your work, and that respect won't vanish if we have a fundamental disagreement about a complex and morally intricate issue. But that kind of lazy writing is a different matter.
@@jesseberg3271 "Stop slaughtering innocent civilians including children." is not complicated by any stretch of the imagination. It was wrong when the US slaughtered civilians in response to the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 and it's wrong for Israel to do it now. Nothing justifies what is being done to the people of Gaza by the small number of genocidal racist extremists currently in charge of the government and military of Israel. Even a large number of Israeli citizens feel it is WRONG. And no, history doesn't justify it, either. We don't need to know almost a century of history to see this is wrong, wrong, WRONG!
Already have Ground News but glad I let the sponsor break play through, because OH MY STARS I can’t wait to watch that Queer Planet series!! (I hadn’t heard about it either.) *After* I finish your video, of course. 🥰 Best ad read ever!
@Aryanwood i see 2 problems. 1 is that PragerU is a well-funded think-tank known for pushing propaganda and their goals don't end at benign financial literacy courses. they bought the gov of NH, i worry that they can buy other leaders and push more harmful propaganda on children. 2 is that some values are bad and shouldn't be taught, and some values are good and should. we should teach children the good and true, not just any old thing someone somewhere thought up
As a teacher I can say: I'm so overworked and strung out during the school year that there's no way in hell I would've reviewed the PragerU curriculum and given feedback in four days. I mean, we already do so much unpaid labor just as part of the job as it is. They knew this and they counted on it.
@@jordy9606 to get past the censors I'd say. Using a special character in Unicode which allows text to be written in reverse. its meant to be used for languages which write right to left.
@@T61APL89Don't worry, Trump will lose this election. He has zero chance and once he loses it's game over since he's a convicted felon and can no longer run for office. Plus he'll probably be dead in like 5-10 years because he's old.
I'm so glad our state governments are handing the keys of our schools to think tanks disguised as educators. Surely this will have no repercussions for how future generations will navigate the increasingly interconnected world.
Informed about what? I feel like by "informed" you mean people believing your personal political ideology. If only the masses had the right information, they'd agree with you. But, no. Huge numbers of people with all sources of information come to vastly different conclusions. And I'd replace "compliant" with "effective". Every colony needs worker bees, me being one of the lower level worker bees, so I'm not being smug or something.
Way back in Junior High, I was taking one of many low-level math courses. I have a learning disability and as a result math was always difficult and stressful for me, especially when I had to "show my work". When I could barely understand polynomials, how am I meant to describe my thought processes. It's hard to remember the specifics (this was almost 20 years ago), but I was working on a problem in class and came to a realization, figuring out a way to calculate the solution that was MUCH easier for me. And despite finding the solution, these problems were still being marked wrong on tests. I showed the teacher how I did it and why, and she told me that it was wrong. When I asked why, she answered, "Because that's not the way we do it" and refused to expound further. If the original way had a specific application and couldn't be changed, I would have understood. But if it did, she never told me. Those weren't guardrails she was putting up, it was fencing. I think that was the first moment I came to understand that the American school system wasn't designed for learning.
I always hated that,and it's the same reason I had so much trouble with in person math class. It would always go exactly the same way The teacher would explain how to do it and it would confuse me, my dad would teach me a much easier to understand way,and I'd have to try to use and understand the teachers way anyway.
Not defending the American school system but that was just one lazy teacher. Every math teacher I’ve ever had would have been happy that you figured out how to do it, and would have offered to show you why the two ways did the same thing, and if there was a reason to prefer the other way they would have explained that.
The sad part about this to me is that there very much usually IS a reason you’re supposed to be taught one way to do a problem over another, but it feels like literally nobody actually gets to the nitty gritty of the WHY. I feel like, even factoring in the diverse interests of people and whether or not they’d like a thing anyway, 99% of the reason math gets such a bad rep is because the WHY of complex math is getting brushed over lazily at best or completely ignored at worst
Unfortunately, a significant number of K-12 math educators in the US don't actually have a deep understanding of math. They'll master the methods they need to teach but have some limits to working further. It wouldn't surprise me if she just couldn't tell if your method was right or wrong. Or it was a lazy way out of explaining something.
I really hope they sue for [trademark, not copyright my bad] infringement, but I'm not sure if they even can because the Green Brothers are so good I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't have the trademark
@@pjgoldstein6562 the greatest compartmentalization of all time is calling everyone antisemetic, while also wanting everyone in Israel to die do your Revelation can happen
@@iamalittler it's not really compartmentalization when you remember PU doesn't see non Christians as equals. You can hate Palestinians and Israelis and encourage George Soros conspiracies at the same time. No mental gymnastics needed.
And their values are directly opposed by the Bible itself! "He who owes a debt will suffer for it, and he who hates debt is sure." -Proverbs 11:15 (not the exact words of any one translation)
17:08 I hate hearing this over and over. America is a country that is and for the foreseeable future will be, torn apart from the inside by "technically legal" loopholes made by lazy, disinterested, and/or money-hungry lawmakers. The most complete and all-encompassing laws we get are the result of problems that finally affect the lawmakers themselves...or trigger their various bigoted tendencies
Fun fact. The US hasn't had a new federal consumer privacy law since 1988, when Congress acted to ban video-store clerks from telling the newspapers what VHS cassettes you were renting. Because of a scandal where a U.S senators VHS rental history was leaked to the press.
@@megamangos7408Except for that USA oligarchs are richer, have cia and mossad at their service, and are so well hidden that many people even worship them. There's also the divine manifestation ego of USA, hell bent on being the solo superpower (something we don't hear from either Russia nor China) There is no fighting your oligarchs. The only way to win is to stop complying.
"Ethical self-interest" is like when a parent puts on the oxygen mask first to make sure they're able to help the kids. It's _not_ "exploiting others for my own personal profit is good, actually!". PragerU is fucking awful.
@@samwindmill8264 All I know about Ayn Rand was that she was quite the objectivist and hated anything she deemed to be weakening society (like religion) because she was disillusioned by communism (and by extension socialism) after suffering in the soviet era. I'm not entirely sure why basically everyone not super far right dislikes her, can I get an explanation? (I have literally heard normally pro-capitalist people argue that Rand was an idiot, and that's quite impressive.)
@@headphonesaxolotl I'm no expert on her, I'll admit that, but essentially the whole "ethical self interest" thing reminds me of her objectivist philosophy that exalts the "virtue of selfishness"
@@headphonesaxolotlshe was so pro-capitalist she spent 8 years eagerly cashing state welfare cheques to treat her lung cancer because she refused to acknowledge smoking was dangerous
If the pipes are lead, then perhaps the water should be calcified, so that the lead has little effect. Put this into the analogy however you may, preferably as something about supporting critical thinking.
PragerU loves endorsing Judeo-Christian values, until they read what the Bible said about bribing government officials, then they resort to ignore them in favor of their true favorite values: Capitalism!
Yeah, it’s the kind of thing I did for chemical handling for cleaning in a chemistry lab and working at an automotive retailer, only somehow even less engaging.
13:30 "Judeo-Christian" should have disqualified Prager "U" as an educational supplement right then and there. The process how they passed sounds similar to how Michigan became a "right to work" state during a lame duck legislative session in 2014. (The 2023-2024 state legislature repealed right-to-work) Prager U knows that their materials would not pass when the actual procedures are used, so they found some loopholes and exploited them for fast-tracking.
It's almost like there was some kind of political project waged on the classrooms of poor people. Kind of like a war on class rooms. A class war perhaps.
Judeo-Christian is also anti semitic for no other reason than Judaism has 8 genders and Christianity is just Roman Settler Colonial Patriarchy in Pope robes
PragerU loves endorsing Judeo-Christian values, until they read what the Bible said about bribing government officials, then they resort to ignore them in favor of their true favorite values: Capitalism!
"Freedom week" where teachers are only allowed to show students state-approved materials. These idiots couldn't make something funnier if they tried. The US is so fucked.
Isn’t that already here! As long as you agree with something it’s ok to force everyone to teach it, but if you disagree, it’s the most horrible thing possible! Give me a break, this is the pot calling the kettle black!
@@SirPhysics people with power have names and addresses, remember that worker's unions exists in part for the bosses sake, after all they much prefer agreeing to not being able to exploit people as much over getting their legs broken until agreeing to not being able to exploit people as much
"Every accusation is a confession". I think most people make the assumption that other people have the same values and morals as they do... for better or worse
"It's not indoctrination! It's education!" "Indoctrination literally means teaching doctrines!" "We're not fascist we just happen to agree with 99% of fascist ideals." I made that last one up. Give it a month or two. Every exaggerating joke I've ever made to show how ridiculous something is is now something people actually do.
strange how so many of prageru's rebuttals or responses are just "no that's not true" without any level of backing up their claim. They did it when saying "no we aren't racist/homophobic/bigoted" and when they responded to the backlash around Edelblut; just "no, it's not related."
that “freedom week” thing is genuinely dystopian. like i hate to drag out the orwell comparisons since they’ve been done to death but it seriously feels like something from 1984
Great video! Having grown up in New Hampshire, there's some additional context about our failing school system some people might want to know. Frank Edelblut is more than just a corrupt fan of PragerU. Sarah Gibson at NHPR (she does really excellent work!) has another article about the man specifically, "How NH Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut used his office in the culture war", which goes into detail about his office's assault on trans and queer teachers. He leverages the state's misconduct investigator to go after specific educators that don't conform to his anti-woke bullshit. He successfully forced a trans teacher into resignation. He helped get a 'divisive concepts' bill passed in 2021, which was only overturned last month. In February he tried to get a bill revived that would allow him to subpoena teachers. But he's just one of many public officials involved in a yearslong assault on our public schools. After the pandemic, the state expanded its private school voucher program, which siphoned off taxpayer funds from public schools to subsidize wealthy students' access to private education. Many of these private schools in the past few years have turned out to be fraudulent or run by hate groups. And homeschool families using voucher funds no longer are regulated by the homeschool comission, and instead by the small board that oversees the voucher program. I graduated from high school in southern NH a year before the pandemic hit, and my brother graduated last year. So many teachers were turned over by the time he graduated that the school was unrecognizable. Test scores fell, they closed down some technical education programs, and students left for private schools or homeschool. The state is trial running a project that conservatives want to impose on the federal level: the end of public education. It doesn't surprise me that PragerU found a home in NH.
NH public schools are shit. I was groomed by my teacher, and even after I forced the school to tell her that she wasn’t allowed to contact me, she broke that rule multiple times and has not been fired. Meanwhile, some of the best teachers had their jobs threatened for showing videos with swears, and my sophomore year, a teacher was beaten by a student so badly that she had to undergo surgery for her injuries. The admins and government don’t care about teachers or students.
@@Tonithealtwing I'm sorry that happened, I've had similar experiences with school administration... the purpose of a system is what it does, and nh schools keep children trapped with their abusers time and time again. I hope you've gotten some support since
Sounds awesome actually. I'm homeschooling my kids because I refuse to let them near the public school system. I wouldn't mind a little kickback for saving my state thousands of dollars a year
You should watch that video if you haven't, it's more morally repugnant & in even worse taste than I thought a craft video could ever be, especially now.
15:44 I had a checkbook as a kid in 2003. It felt arbitrary and antiquated then, and only happened because my grandparents insisted I learn how to balance it. The other sentences about credit card/student loan debt (predatory debt usually) isn't as out of touch, but holy heII.
The only people I know who still use checks are those who are too old-fashioned to accept more modern forms of payment. But I agree, learning to balance a checkbook is a good way to practice financial accountability and learn the value of proper record-keeping.
I believe they mean that metaphorically, call it a linguistic skeuomorph (is there a word for that) but I find a lot of people use "balancing books" to just mean keeping your finances in order.
I know this is old, but the ridiculous name thing is true for a lot of conservative politicians in the US. A few years ago there was a scandal involving a conservative politician assaulting his bodyguard by grabbing their crotch. His name is Matt Schlapp.
Ah, yes. We like choosing which parents we were born to. (Do these PragerU folks realize children can be born into poor families, and that is an involuntary condition any way they slice it? You cannot decide the conditions of your birth; that would be anachronistic since you wouldn’t even previously exist in the first place with the capacity to decide such)
Ugh. I know. Debt is an awful but necessary part of our current economy, and being poor isn’t a choice - it’s an incidental problem that happens by not having enough money to access resources above survival.
If you don't have any form of debt you actually get your credit score lowered. The economy being based on "trust" by insurance and credit companies is one of the worst aspects of our system.
@@bouteilledeau1463 idk, it makes sense to me. Your credit score only determines your ability to get better rates on loans. if you don't want to take on debt, why would you care about your credit score?
@fedweezy4976 I'd agree in that sense that not everybody is taking out $2,000 loans that needs a high credit score for whatever reason But credit is also used for renting most other contracts involving payments over time Its weird to say that you don't need to worry about credit if you're not going to carry debt, because only the wealthy have the option not to. Most people want a house or car and can't afford pay it off immediately Its weird though, because it seems like a solid system on paper
Something worth remembering that is very relevant to this issue (I think she has said it in her other Prager U videos but it is conspicuous in its absence here) is that Prager U in particular and conservatives more generally only view education through the lens of indoctrination. That's why their "educational" materials are so shitty. That's why their mission statement is to "instill correct values" rather than teaching kids to think critically and creatively about the world. That's why they are so defensive about anyone they not like being involved in education (clearly a gay teacher must be trying to indoctrinate students to either be gay themselves or accept gay people, that's the only reason they can conceptualize anyone becoming a teacher). It's not because they're lazy (though they very well may be) that the assessments in their "courses" are simply multiple choice questions checking recall. They fundamentally believe that the benchmark of successful education is whether students start to parrot back everything they're being told.
Right wing psychology is rationalizing abuse in general. We'll have a monarch and morality police if we let them win electorally. They will absolutely groom your kids.
@@DiamondKingStudiosDats capitalism Babeyyyyyy!! Who gives a shit about making money over a long period of time when you can just make a fuck ton of cash and let some other nerds deal with the fallout.
@@Nope-bl3ig “I’ll be dead when the chickens come home to roost; let it be my grandchildren’s problem!” “Ed, didn’t our parents’ generation always talk about leaving behind a better future for their children?” “Martha, dear, we are their children. Nothing of what I’m doing is wrong.”
As a teacher i cannot comprehend having enough time to do this but it also does not surprise me that these teachers would be asked to do something like this, our time is never respected ):
Why would your time be respected? Y'all are the last real union standing in the U.S. capital has a hellbent dedication to breaking you on the wheel of profits for the rich.
Y'all deserve so much more! Teaching is maybe the most important job in society but in this corporate hellscape of a country real education is a threat to the rich and powerful. Critical thinking will only ever lead to the conclusion that corruption is everywhere and greed is rampant.
While there aren't any OFFICIAL lessons happening in Illinois (at least to my knowledge), I had one teacher show a PragerU video about state tax, and it basically tried to show how the less wealthy people are being selfish by taking money away from the rich people in order to fund state amenities.
I once had a teacher that only played videos. They didn't teach in any other way and a lot of the videos seemed to be. false. I also remember the teacher mockingly doing an African accent (I wouldn't have guessed it was African if he didn't say).
It can really suck sometimes being on the side we're on. To prevent this garbage from indoctrinating kids, we have to get it right every. Single. Time. They just have to pitch it right once, get it passed and allowed in schools one time, and it opens the door and sets a sort of unofficial precedence.
One little gem i found recently was The Urbanist based out of the Seattle area. Focuses on local things that might not be relevant to everyone but is a great indie advocacy newspaper dealing with transit, housing, and inequality
Yeah, there are some really great indie journalists around MA, too. But I know it's very hard for them to get by, and they get basically no support. But hey, if anyone here wants to support a local journalist and his bazillion FOIA requests, Andrew Quemere is great.
"Three Dennis Prager monologues in a trench coat masquerading as something of actual academic value" is a sentence that goes way harder than it needed to
Monologues in a trench coat? I would not expect a teacher, who is reading her words off a previously prepared script, to say a grammatically incorrect phrase like this.
@ThePenguinMan A meme based on dogwhistles from 4chan. The original post was something like "I saw a pretty white girl holding hands with a black guy... Its over, the west has fallen." And you can guess what racist 4chan users think should happen to billions. Its just funny to use those slogans in equally stupid ways.
Issues with the actual course aside, my biggest problem with this whole situation is that it provides PragerU with legitimacy. It introduces them to children as something they should associate with the institution of education, borrowing that credibility and priming them to accept their other content as fact.
Right? Like every night I go to sleep thinking "the plot could not POSSIBLY thicken any more. This soup is nearly a fucking rock at this point.". I wake up and surprise surprise I find yet another new thing that makes me wanna ditch the USA altogether
The bananas thing about PragerU is how well it fits into privatization of every other aspect of public life, where chronic, deliberate disinvestment in necessary services becomes the driving force for privatizers to come into a sector (like education), make a buck, and push a wild ideological agenda along the way. It's self-fulfilling AND self-reinforcing: a doom loop.
@@anothercub6958 Ya can't go around calling all Christians bigots. Not to say PragerU isn't. But that's a hurtful stereotype. I say this not even being Christian myself. I'm just your average stereotype un-enjoyer.
I have a friend who's name is Пчёлкин, which basically means Bee (that's how I got to this channel in the first place, by the way) and he also uses 'if I had a nickel...' line. So, if I had a nickel for every time Bee says 'if I had a nickel...', than I would have two nickels, which is not a lot but still wierd that happened twice.
Sending teachers the content during summer break. Over a holiday weekend no less is just… unbelievable. As a teacher, I actively try to not obsessively check my email over the summer (for my own sanity) and I certainly wouldn’t be checking around a holiday.
Thanks to corporate data harvesting. PraguerU's owners can buy the info to find exactly when you and your fellow wages slaves are least likely to notice when they are trying to hustle you.
@@Praisethesunson I don't think it takes data harvesting to find out people will be least likely to check their email when they are on a lengthier break. Not that I think data harvesting is good or anything.
That’s weird 2 teachers with different points yet the same dislike. I saw another post that said that it would be a pain since they barely have any time. When would the best time be for educators?
I don't _hate_ the idea of school credit being given for extra curricular activity, but I am _deeply suspicious_ of it, conceptually. Beyond the funding issues, and beyond. Because this implies that hobbies are for reward, not for leisure, and I worry it will train kids to not do hobbies unless they can use it for a _hustle_ , in the same way that education often trains kids out of being curious, etc, because of how extrinsic rewards often replace intrinsic motivations when people are given extrinsic rewards for things they were intrinsically motivated to do hence why badge based gamification is dangerous unless applied carefully.
As a former NH public school student, this program has been really good, but is ripe for potential abuse. One way I know a lot of students took advantage of it was getting their PE/gym credits by either participating in sports or starting their own exercise regimen, and then presenting on it to confirm what they learned. That way, they can get their required gym credits, but don’t have to go through the tedium of dodgeball, capture the flag, and being shamed in front of your peers. But as we can see, people have found out how they can abuse this system to convince students to take courses from their very biased perspectives.
"Basic concepts of Judeo-Christian morality" = "personal responsibility" and "hard work" Those are neither principal tenants of Judeo-Christian teachings and even if they were, they would not be exclusive to it.
Furthermore, personal responsibility and hard work were meant as a way to live the disciple life to dedicate your life to God, which does actually include helping other communities and not imposing whatever. As much as it is cool that the Bible exists and has been surviving for 5000 years, I think there is a good reason nothing else has had such an uninterrupted line of continuity.
I can't wait for some old Christian lady to be like "OMG I LOVE YOUR CROSS EARR--......" and then realizes they're frickin' swords and quickly waddles away from you 😂😂
I love the eyeball mug. The only thing that could make it better is that it was glazed. I think adding some color would make the eyeballs pop. Either way nice job Zoe's sister. Also, good video.
Thanks a bunch for covering this. I have watched a debunk of Prager U in a while and its important to remember how they just keep going. Gotta love the Koch brother Funded think tank wielding its influence in this way. Its amazing how important boring things like public meetings minutes and the meetings themselves can be. Also love the Education Commissioner saying when it gets approved. Also them doing something so innocuous as a financial literacy course is definitely about leveraging plausible deniability its an innocent foot in the door before they launch more insidious programs to dictate educational alternatives that set people up with rotten foundational understandings of a whole myriad of subjects. It just reinforces the Dennis Prager vision of the status quo and the reactionary nature of the United States. The thing that always kills me about Randian so-called philosophy is it just strikes me as a justification of the status-quo. Ethical-Self Interest is a dressed up way of describing what rich people already act like. They just either have no interest in ethics or the complaints of regular people since we aren't wealthy enough to matter. This is kinda half-baked but I don't think Ayn Rand or anyone who subscribes to her thoughts is worth more than that in a youtube comment.
You hit the nail on the head. Preserving the status quo is the whole game. Anyway you get to that point is fine, as long as you get there. Anny ranny is just a pretext. She didn't matter(she died poor and on social security). The status quo is not neutral. It benefits the people who own things at the direct expense of people who have to work to live. The rich would love To maintain their wealth and privilege by asserting God said so. But industrial society is still too secular for that argument to convince the poors(you). For now anyway. So instead they use BS like Atlas shuggied as pretext to keep hustling poors like you.
It's something I feel even more responsible for as an American. To me, we have even more of a responsibility to stand up against this BS. Because it is used to ideologically and violently colonize other countries.
Heartbreaking. I went no contact with my father after he sent me an islamophobic PraguerU video with a ridiculous paragraph. It was the last straw after everything he's done and said to me. I hate his fear mongering
Tbh the fact they aren't making money with it should just make you more suspicious. If not money, what is their motivation? And yeah, it's influence. Power. ...which can coincidentally be leveraged for money, for example with their fossil fuel industry patrons.
Paying a review committee member to participate in a speaker series sounds and awful lot like what drug manufacturers did for pain doctors who happened to prescribe lots of opioids...
If financial lit by Dennis Prager is worth a credit then I want a PHD in history for all the Ken Burns they show on PBS. Now that I think of it I’d also like to be credentialed as a buildings inspector for the two seasons of “this old house” I made it through.
I love the comment at 15:44 about keeping a checkbook balanced. In my life I think I've written maybe 5 checks. The primary use of a check in my life has been to write "VOID" in big letters on one in order to set up direct deposit. What does balancing a checkbook even mean in the year 2024?
cheques were a stop gap until comms systems got good enough to facilitate mass direct transfers. The one advantage of cheques was being able to gift people cash in a slightly more abstracted and less gauche way 😂
@paultapping9510 - It means keeping your finances in order. A balanced checkbook shows that your deposits and your debits are equal to each other, so you haven't over spent or underspent your money. It's an old fashioned term in 2024, but the meaning is still important.
@@TrueOpinion99 I think what throws me off is that a literal checkbook is a hopelessly out-of-touch financial ledger. Like, try to explain "floating a check" to someone under the age of 45.
@WilliamRoyNelson - Managing and recording your expenditures versus your income is outdated? Sure, the phrase may be a little out of vogue, but the meaning is important (and probably explained in the course).
@@TrueOpinion99 Balancing a checkbook, in any sense, is not part of the PragerU curriculum. The unit on Checking and Savings accounts is a 5-minute long video. www.education.nh.gov/sites/g/files/ehbemt326/files/inline-documents/sonh/learn-everywhere-program-application-prageru-1.pdf
I really appreciate your thorough examination of issues like this. Your approach to video essays is the antithesis of 'the channel who shall not be named '. Thank you for the work you do! COMPLETELY unrelated to your value as a person and a content creator, you're haircut is cute!
Shoutout to Zoe's sister and eyeball mugs! It's scary to me how often hundreds (or even hundreds of thousands) of people can say "we don't want this" and people in power will just do it anyway. I have been in meetings at work or at public hearings in my city, and the overwhelming number of people will say "this is not a good idea" and the people in charge will say "we hear you, but we're doing it anyway." They seem to believe that they can "address objections" and that will convince people to change their minds. And if people don't change their minds, or at least shut up about it, they become a "danger" that needs to be stopped. It's annoying when it's a company deciding to buy a cheap content management system that's riddled with errors, but it's outright terrifying when it's your government deciding to supply a foreign country with weapons so they can commit a genocide. Public schools accepting PregarU is somewhere in between these things, but the overall pattern of decision makers ignoring what people want in order to do what benefits them is frightening.
An interesting snippet of context that nobody might know without knowing someone from Amherst, New Hampshire is how unconventional its high school is. Students are encouraged to refer to their teachers by first name, there is a period of the day dedicated to getting students who teachers perceive to be hanging out in different social circles to interact, and there is a graduation requirement to give a 30 minute presentation on a topic of your choosing, to be graded pass/fail by committee. So, it's interesting to me to see two comments from Amherst defending any mediocre online financial literacy course. Whether this is meant to show that parents/adults in town want to see more attention dedicated to financial literacy in a context vacuum or reflects in any way how these parents see their public schools is not for me to say.
Dang, I have friends from Amherst and didn't know about the first name thing. Also, your senior project presentation had to be 30 minutes? How were you guys supposed to stall for time for that long?
that email that says it "will help young people keep their checkbook balanced" cracked me the fuck up. how old is that person?? i'm guessing at LEAST 80. we don't need to do that anymore, grandma! we can check our bank balance and transaction history in about 90 seconds using the computer we keep in our fucking pocket
@rileyflack8010 - Do you know that checkbooks come with a table that helps you track your deposits and your debits? The purpose is to ensure that you haven't overspent or underspent your money. It's an old fashioned term for budgetting your expenditures (at least in part) so you don't overspend inadvertently. Sure, you can check your back account on an app, but a physical budget (or, balance sheet) is always going to be far more helpful than just a quick glance at your phone.
@@TrueOpinion99 the point of "balancing your checkbook" wasn't as a budgeting tool, it was to not overdraw your account. to ensure that money going into your account was equal to or exceeding the money coming out. in modern times this is accomplished by checking your balance online. budgeting is an entirely different process where you plan your purchases ahead of time. balancing your checkbook isn't helpful for that, as it is a record of transactions after the fact.
@DontMockMySmock - Even in modern times, you still need to track your expenditures to prevent overspending. A good budget will include an expenditure tracker...and the principles of "balancing your checkbook" still apply there. Balancing your checkbook and budgeting your money are inexorably linked, even in 2024.
Before it was commonly talked about and before realizing what it was, I started watching a lot of PragerU’s content in 2020, thinking it was educational since it used a lot of visual styles and script structures in common with my favorite science and history channels at the time. I can’t recall what exactly turned me off of their content but I shudder to think how close I came to being radicalized in the wrong direction.
I remember them saying "obedient children are happy children" and immediately being disgusted because I know, firsthand, how wrong that is. Constantly being terrified of punishment is not 'happy' it's 'need therapy'.
@@JHorst-r2u- You do know that you can raise obedient children without them needing therapy as adults, right? Even as adults, we still act in certain ways because we are fearful of the consequences. Kids that are raised in households with standards that are consistently and fairly enforced do report higher rates of happiness and satisfaction...even when they get in trouble for not meeting said standards.
As a conservative, I thought long and hard about your comment. I eventually was convinced that the PragerU courses are PARTLY propagandic. However, propaganda isn't always tied to negative things. In this instance, I would say that the ideas PragerU presents to children are pro-American and overall very beneficial. I do not agree that religion should be taught so upfront like that in a public school but I don't think it's the end of the world. I would prefer the religion part about Judeo Christian bullshit to be left out ideally but it wouldn't destroy the U.S. if it were left in.
I think it's really interesting that there was so much pushback in NH, because I don't necessarily expect a lot of people to be closely watching that sort of thing. I thought the story would be, it got snuck in while no one was paying attention. Heartening to know people *were* watching and dissenting, concerning to know it didn’t work.
It's so annoying when a video (like this one) doesn't show up in my subscription feed for a full day but then when it does show up UA-cam slips it in chronologically as if it had been there the whole time. Quit trying to gaslight me UA-cam.
I have to wonder if NH just opened itself to lawsuits. PragerU openly said they want to teach judeo-christian morality. That seems problematic from a separation of church and state point of view.
Zoe...Ms. Bee...I don't know how you wish to be referred to. All I know is I am grateful for your videos, this stuff is important. It really scares me, it's stuff like this that makes anti-natalism look good, and what makes me fear for the wellbeing of my kids should I ever have any. I already feel like the education system failed me, I'm still trying to catch up on what school never nurtured in me, I don't want the same for my kids, it's why I'd rather homeschool them as opposed to sending them to school. Honestly I wish you could be my kids' teacher, you actually care about students and know how to better educate, I'd have complete faith in you.
There's this episode of Daria where the principal brings in soda machines and ads to the school in exchange for funding, and the public forum about this issue was held during the freaking Super Bowl. The deal ends up being disastrous for the students and faculty. Not sure what made me think of that...
I gasped when I got the notification for a new Zoe Bee video, and I literally screamed when I realised it was a video on Prager U Edit: She even addressed Prager U's Econ 101, this is life ❤❤❤ Also, shout out to Zoe's sister and her eyeball mug, lol 😂
in my high school social studies class we used to watch PragerU videos as an example of right wing viewpoints. Like we would watch a more left wing video about trickle down economics and then we would watch a PragerU video and compare the differences and question why they were different and how they were shaped by an individuals background. Thats the only way I could see PragerU videos being used in schools.
Stay informed on breaking news and practice critical thinking by subscribing through my link ground.news/zoebee to get 40% off unlimited access this month with the Vantage Subscription.
I really wish you hadn't felt the need to take a cheap potshot at the situation in Palestine and Israel. If you want to make a full video laying out your views on it, that would be one thing. But it's way too complicated to be boiled down to a one sentence slogan, and frankly that's the kind of lazy communication you usually deconstruct. I like and admire your work, and that respect won't vanish if we have a fundamental disagreement about a complex and morally intricate issue. But that kind of lazy writing is a different matter.
@@jesseberg3271 sure, lets not "free palestine".... let israel continue its apartheid state and genoicing militancy
@@jesseberg3271 "Stop slaughtering innocent civilians including children." is not complicated by any stretch of the imagination.
It was wrong when the US slaughtered civilians in response to the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 and it's wrong for Israel to do it now.
Nothing justifies what is being done to the people of Gaza by the small number of genocidal racist extremists currently in charge of the government and military of Israel. Even a large number of Israeli citizens feel it is WRONG.
And no, history doesn't justify it, either. We don't need to know almost a century of history to see this is wrong, wrong, WRONG!
Already have Ground News but glad I let the sponsor break play through, because OH MY STARS I can’t wait to watch that Queer Planet series!! (I hadn’t heard about it either.) *After* I finish your video, of course. 🥰 Best ad read ever!
@Aryanwood i see 2 problems. 1 is that PragerU is a well-funded think-tank known for pushing propaganda and their goals don't end at benign financial literacy courses. they bought the gov of NH, i worry that they can buy other leaders and push more harmful propaganda on children. 2 is that some values are bad and shouldn't be taught, and some values are good and should. we should teach children the good and true, not just any old thing someone somewhere thought up
As a teacher I can say: I'm so overworked and strung out during the school year that there's no way in hell I would've reviewed the PragerU curriculum and given feedback in four days. I mean, we already do so much unpaid labor just as part of the job as it is. They knew this and they counted on it.
@ville__ huh???? Huh???? Huuuuuuh???????????? What are you saying I'm so confused...
@@abarbienamedken3334Troll gonna troll. Report 'em and move on. Sorry you had to experience it.
@ville__ well then don't watch this video and watch child porn instead, weirdo... 🤨🤨
@ville__why is the text backward when i click translate
@@jordy9606 to get past the censors I'd say. Using a special character in Unicode which allows text to be written in reverse. its meant to be used for languages which write right to left.
I hate how this was used to be like "pragerU is trying to get its way into schools" and now it's "how pragerU is in schools"
Up next, "pragerU corrupted and ruined schools"
Can't wait for when my daughter sees the "How President Baron Trump Perfected His Theory of Race From PragerU" video in the future ♥
@@T61APL89Don't worry, Trump will lose this election. He has zero chance and once he loses it's game over since he's a convicted felon and can no longer run for office. Plus he'll probably be dead in like 5-10 years because he's old.
@@T61APL89 Man, y'all really are brainwashed.
I'm so glad our state governments are handing the keys of our schools to think tanks disguised as educators. Surely this will have no repercussions for how future generations will navigate the increasingly interconnected world.
Serfs don't need to learn anything beyond what advertisements need them to learn.
@@Praisethesunson if they knew better, they'd do better. so keep the serfs ignorant, lest they revolt
It's been doing that since public school has been a thing so what is the big deal
these replies are incredibly depressing. might well comment "the world is shit for a long time lets just give up!"
@@saltypineapple8371 stay determined skeleton
Huh. Last I knew, PragerU was pretty open about the fact that they actually aren't an educational facility. I guess they've changed their mind.
The last ad I had to watch from them was making fun of college education and proud to be not tainted by college education. 😂
@ville__Please explain how child abuse is ever preferred to a UA-cam video without admitting that you like it
@@katiemorison7969 They are a literal neo-nazi harassing trans, queer, and now apparently feminist creators.
@ville__ Wow you REALLY chose to phrase it like that. Kinda outing yourself there, buddy.
@ville__ you're caught in an infinite loop. Try rebooting and see if that fixes your issue.
I was in my 30s before I understood the purpose of school wasn't to have an informed populace, it was to have a complaint workforce.
Compliant*
My classmate from G10 said that and I couldn't really see where he's coming from but yeah 😂
now I kinda do
And yet people hate on homeschooling or alternate schooling options
Informed about what?
I feel like by "informed" you mean people believing your personal political ideology. If only the masses had the right information, they'd agree with you. But, no. Huge numbers of people with all sources of information come to vastly different conclusions.
And I'd replace "compliant" with "effective". Every colony needs worker bees, me being one of the lower level worker bees, so I'm not being smug or something.
@@PlayNiceFolks I thought self-made strawmen was only a Tumblr thing.
Way back in Junior High, I was taking one of many low-level math courses. I have a learning disability and as a result math was always difficult and stressful for me, especially when I had to "show my work". When I could barely understand polynomials, how am I meant to describe my thought processes.
It's hard to remember the specifics (this was almost 20 years ago), but I was working on a problem in class and came to a realization, figuring out a way to calculate the solution that was MUCH easier for me. And despite finding the solution, these problems were still being marked wrong on tests.
I showed the teacher how I did it and why, and she told me that it was wrong. When I asked why, she answered, "Because that's not the way we do it" and refused to expound further.
If the original way had a specific application and couldn't be changed, I would have understood. But if it did, she never told me. Those weren't guardrails she was putting up, it was fencing.
I think that was the first moment I came to understand that the American school system wasn't designed for learning.
I always hated that,and it's the same reason I had so much trouble with in person math class. It would always go exactly the same way The teacher would explain how to do it and it would confuse me, my dad would teach me a much easier to understand way,and I'd have to try to use and understand the teachers way anyway.
Not defending the American school system but that was just one lazy teacher. Every math teacher I’ve ever had would have been happy that you figured out how to do it, and would have offered to show you why the two ways did the same thing, and if there was a reason to prefer the other way they would have explained that.
The sad part about this to me is that there very much usually IS a reason you’re supposed to be taught one way to do a problem over another, but it feels like literally nobody actually gets to the nitty gritty of the WHY. I feel like, even factoring in the diverse interests of people and whether or not they’d like a thing anyway, 99% of the reason math gets such a bad rep is because the WHY of complex math is getting brushed over lazily at best or completely ignored at worst
@@emmanarotzky6565 it’s the education systems duty to make sure teachers can’t do things like that, yet it encourages it
Unfortunately, a significant number of K-12 math educators in the US don't actually have a deep understanding of math. They'll master the methods they need to teach but have some limits to working further. It wouldn't surprise me if she just couldn't tell if your method was right or wrong. Or it was a lazy way out of explaining something.
Cash Course? Do they just try to prey on dyslexic people looking for Crash Course videos?
Typo-squatting IRL!
I didn’t even realize it said 💵course
I really hope they sue for [trademark, not copyright my bad] infringement, but I'm not sure if they even can because the Green Brothers are so good I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't have the trademark
There is a non-zero chance that they chose that name in the hopes that people would confuse the two.
(if i’m correct) crash course has a pending trademark application
“We aren’t political, we just want to teach Judeo-Christian values.”
💀💀💀
(i mean laughter at that claim)
“we aren’t anti-science, we want to teach judeo-christian values”
@@pjgoldstein6562 the greatest compartmentalization of all time is calling everyone antisemetic, while also wanting everyone in Israel to die do your Revelation can happen
@@iamalittler it's not really compartmentalization when you remember PU doesn't see non Christians as equals. You can hate Palestinians and Israelis and encourage George Soros conspiracies at the same time. No mental gymnastics needed.
And their values are directly opposed by the Bible itself!
"He who owes a debt will suffer for it, and he who hates debt is sure."
-Proverbs 11:15 (not the exact words of any one translation)
17:08 I hate hearing this over and over. America is a country that is and for the foreseeable future will be, torn apart from the inside by "technically legal" loopholes made by lazy, disinterested, and/or money-hungry lawmakers. The most complete and all-encompassing laws we get are the result of problems that finally affect the lawmakers themselves...or trigger their various bigoted tendencies
Fun fact.
The US hasn't had a new federal consumer privacy law since 1988, when Congress acted to ban video-store clerks from telling the newspapers what VHS cassettes you were renting. Because of a scandal where a U.S senators VHS rental history was leaked to the press.
We're not the only ones dealing with shitty oligarchs, but we absolutely need to fight back against them.
@@megamangos7408Except for that USA oligarchs are richer, have cia and mossad at their service, and are so well hidden that many people even worship them.
There's also the divine manifestation ego of USA, hell bent on being the solo superpower (something we don't hear from either Russia nor China)
There is no fighting your oligarchs. The only way to win is to stop complying.
Something about the people of the world rising against our oppressors or something
"Ethical self-interest" is like when a parent puts on the oxygen mask first to make sure they're able to help the kids. It's _not_ "exploiting others for my own personal profit is good, actually!". PragerU is fucking awful.
Giving strong Ayn Rand vibes, unsurprisingly
Very good point
@@samwindmill8264 All I know about Ayn Rand was that she was quite the objectivist and hated anything she deemed to be weakening society (like religion) because she was disillusioned by communism (and by extension socialism) after suffering in the soviet era. I'm not entirely sure why basically everyone not super far right dislikes her, can I get an explanation? (I have literally heard normally pro-capitalist people argue that Rand was an idiot, and that's quite impressive.)
@@headphonesaxolotl I'm no expert on her, I'll admit that, but essentially the whole "ethical self interest" thing reminds me of her objectivist philosophy that exalts the "virtue of selfishness"
@@headphonesaxolotlshe was so pro-capitalist she spent 8 years eagerly cashing state welfare cheques to treat her lung cancer because she refused to acknowledge smoking was dangerous
PragerU is for education what lead pipes are for drinking water.
A cheap solution whose negative impacts only impact the poor.
If the pipes are lead, then perhaps the water should be calcified, so that the lead has little effect.
Put this into the analogy however you may, preferably as something about supporting critical thinking.
How do you know that🧐🧐🧐@ville__
@ville__ Bro you didn't have to self report like that, what are you doing?
Lead pipes typically form a hardened ceramic-like layer along the inside, preventing lead from leeching into the water.
i love how the comic sans foreshadows how transcendently incurious pragerU's entire approach is lmao
Anytime someone says “Judeo-Christian” my eyes roll out of my head.
PragerU loves endorsing Judeo-Christian values, until they read what the Bible said about bribing government officials, then they resort to ignore them in favor of their true favorite values: Capitalism!
I had to hold back from shouting about that having no place in schools.
SAME
Especially since the second that they are strong enough to do it they will remove the judeo part and come after them too.
"Love thy neighbour... unless they're gay, or trans, or non binary, or really anything that we've cherry picked from the bible as saying god hates it"
These “courses” sound like those mandatory training courses at corporate jobs.
That's exactly the model they are copying
I've just finished updating my mandatory training and had exactly the same thought.
That's their plan. The rich get Republicans to support them, yet the long-term goal is far more selfish.
Yeah, it’s the kind of thing I did for chemical handling for cleaning in a chemistry lab and working at an automotive retailer, only somehow even less engaging.
Dang yeah.
Two people is not a committee. Two people is a lunch date.
13:30 "Judeo-Christian" should have disqualified Prager "U" as an educational supplement right then and there. The process how they passed sounds similar to how Michigan became a "right to work" state during a lame duck legislative session in 2014. (The 2023-2024 state legislature repealed right-to-work) Prager U knows that their materials would not pass when the actual procedures are used, so they found some loopholes and exploited them for fast-tracking.
It's almost like there was some kind of political project waged on the classrooms of poor people. Kind of like a war on class rooms. A class war perhaps.
Judeo-Christian is also anti semitic for no other reason than Judaism has 8 genders and Christianity is just Roman Settler Colonial Patriarchy in Pope robes
PragerU loves endorsing Judeo-Christian values, until they read what the Bible said about bribing government officials, then they resort to ignore them in favor of their true favorite values: Capitalism!
Can you explain to me what are those loopholes?
Exactly
"Freedom week" where teachers are only allowed to show students state-approved materials.
These idiots couldn't make something funnier if they tried. The US is so fucked.
War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength
Love me some managed democracy.
@@ClanWiE FR 1984
Isn’t that already here! As long as you agree with something it’s ok to force everyone to teach it, but if you disagree, it’s the most horrible thing possible! Give me a break, this is the pot calling the kettle black!
It’s called that because it makes freedom weak
This actually gives me hope.
I'm so happy to hear so many parents are fighting so hard to keep this crap out of their children's schools.
Meanwhile private boarding schools that cost more than the average American makes per year. Will never be exposed to that garbage
Save that hope for when the people with power actually listen to that fighting
@@SirPhysics Sorry, not doing pessimism today. My mood is already bad enough.
@@SirPhysics people with power have names and addresses, remember that worker's unions exists in part for the bosses sake, after all they much prefer agreeing to not being able to exploit people as much over getting their legs broken until agreeing to not being able to exploit people as much
And yet you people complain about "book bans".
I like how pregerU despises academia in their videos yet promotes everything wrong with it through their actions.
"Every accusation is a confession". I think most people make the assumption that other people have the same values and morals as they do... for better or worse
"Our courses are not political, they're designed to impart our political values!"
Yeesh.
They don't think it's political as long as they agree with it.
@@Mephariaspolitics is when the woman with the blue hair and the buzz cut is yelling at me.
“Our political values are the norm and have always been the norm. There is no need to label it political!”
"It's not indoctrination! It's education!" "Indoctrination literally means teaching doctrines!" "We're not fascist we just happen to agree with 99% of fascist ideals."
I made that last one up. Give it a month or two. Every exaggerating joke I've ever made to show how ridiculous something is is now something people actually do.
strange how so many of prageru's rebuttals or responses are just "no that's not true" without any level of backing up their claim.
They did it when saying "no we aren't racist/homophobic/bigoted" and when they responded to the backlash around Edelblut; just "no, it's not related."
I mean, if they cared at all about evidence-based claims maybe they wouldn't be so awful
A very large group of parents, teachers, students, and others: *Provide a large list of concerns about PargerU*
PragerU: Nuh Uh
Hey, now. That's just not true.
/Whistles nonchalantly
Dennis Prager monologue "Mommy gimmie milk or ill ruin your life."
I wanna mommy, I want milk, I want to be held, I want to be comforted!
@@gyrozeppeli4862Well, most all of us have been there at some point in our lives, usually at our youngest.
@@gyrozeppeli4862that's not goodness, that's narcissism!
@@DiamondKingStudios I disagree with the youngest part
@@gyrozeppeli4862 if only Dennis Prager had those things as a kid as maybe he wouldn't be such a shithead
that “freedom week” thing is genuinely dystopian. like i hate to drag out the orwell comparisons since they’ve been done to death but it seriously feels like something from 1984
I KNOW EVERY TIME THE RIGHT SAYS SOMETHING POLITICAL ITS ACTUALLY JUST 1984
6 minutes of hate anyone?
“I know bureaucracy is super boring”
[viewers quake with excitement]
Bureaucracy is the fifth horseman.
😂😂😂
Ohhhhh yay dystopian information beyond my human comprehension with horrible implications for the future
Om nom nom
I wanna crumb :(
Great video! Having grown up in New Hampshire, there's some additional context about our failing school system some people might want to know.
Frank Edelblut is more than just a corrupt fan of PragerU. Sarah Gibson at NHPR (she does really excellent work!) has another article about the man specifically, "How NH Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut used his office in the culture war", which goes into detail about his office's assault on trans and queer teachers. He leverages the state's misconduct investigator to go after specific educators that don't conform to his anti-woke bullshit. He successfully forced a trans teacher into resignation. He helped get a 'divisive concepts' bill passed in 2021, which was only overturned last month. In February he tried to get a bill revived that would allow him to subpoena teachers. But he's just one of many public officials involved in a yearslong assault on our public schools.
After the pandemic, the state expanded its private school voucher program, which siphoned off taxpayer funds from public schools to subsidize wealthy students' access to private education. Many of these private schools in the past few years have turned out to be fraudulent or run by hate groups. And homeschool families using voucher funds no longer are regulated by the homeschool comission, and instead by the small board that oversees the voucher program. I graduated from high school in southern NH a year before the pandemic hit, and my brother graduated last year. So many teachers were turned over by the time he graduated that the school was unrecognizable. Test scores fell, they closed down some technical education programs, and students left for private schools or homeschool.
The state is trial running a project that conservatives want to impose on the federal level: the end of public education. It doesn't surprise me that PragerU found a home in NH.
Came here to second this as a fellow granite stater!!
NH public schools are shit. I was groomed by my teacher, and even after I forced the school to tell her that she wasn’t allowed to contact me, she broke that rule multiple times and has not been fired. Meanwhile, some of the best teachers had their jobs threatened for showing videos with swears, and my sophomore year, a teacher was beaten by a student so badly that she had to undergo surgery for her injuries. The admins and government don’t care about teachers or students.
@@Tonithealtwing I'm sorry that happened, I've had similar experiences with school administration... the purpose of a system is what it does, and nh schools keep children trapped with their abusers time and time again. I hope you've gotten some support since
Sounds awesome actually. I'm homeschooling my kids because I refuse to let them near the public school system. I wouldn't mind a little kickback for saving my state thousands of dollars a year
“Non-Political Iron Dome Defender” sounds like a line from a punk song that conservatives don’t understand is disagreeing with them
It's giving "what is the machine we're raging against guys?" Energy.
Heard about something like that in a little book I read once I believe 1984 had something called Peacekeeping missiles.
You should watch that video if you haven't, it's more morally repugnant & in even worse taste than I thought a craft video could ever be, especially now.
My mom loves American Idiot and she loves when conservatives think they love it too
Sounds like an Anti-Flag album name
15:44 I had a checkbook as a kid in 2003. It felt arbitrary and antiquated then, and only happened because my grandparents insisted I learn how to balance it.
The other sentences about credit card/student loan debt (predatory debt usually) isn't as out of touch, but holy heII.
The only people I know who still use checks are those who are too old-fashioned to accept more modern forms of payment. But I agree, learning to balance a checkbook is a good way to practice financial accountability and learn the value of proper record-keeping.
I believe they mean that metaphorically, call it a linguistic skeuomorph (is there a word for that) but I find a lot of people use "balancing books" to just mean keeping your finances in order.
I think you are seeking something like metonymy or synecdoche, but with the added context that the term is deprecated or obsolete.
'Edelblut' is absolutely the most hilarious name for a corrupt politician I've ever heard. It literally translates from German into 'Noble Blood.' 😂
I know this is old, but the ridiculous name thing is true for a lot of conservative politicians in the US. A few years ago there was a scandal involving a conservative politician assaulting his bodyguard by grabbing their crotch. His name is Matt Schlapp.
"Debt is good." "You chose to be poor." Oh no... 😓😓
Ah, yes. We like choosing which parents we were born to.
(Do these PragerU folks realize children can be born into poor families, and that is an involuntary condition any way they slice it? You cannot decide the conditions of your birth; that would be anachronistic since you wouldn’t even previously exist in the first place with the capacity to decide such)
Ugh. I know. Debt is an awful but necessary part of our current economy, and being poor isn’t a choice - it’s an incidental problem that happens by not having enough money to access resources above survival.
If you don't have any form of debt you actually get your credit score lowered.
The economy being based on "trust" by insurance and credit companies is one of the worst aspects of our system.
@@bouteilledeau1463 idk, it makes sense to me. Your credit score only determines your ability to get better rates on loans. if you don't want to take on debt, why would you care about your credit score?
@fedweezy4976 I'd agree in that sense that not everybody is taking out $2,000 loans that needs a high credit score for whatever reason
But credit is also used for renting most other contracts involving payments over time
Its weird to say that you don't need to worry about credit if you're not going to carry debt, because only the wealthy have the option not to.
Most people want a house or car and can't afford pay it off immediately
Its weird though, because it seems like a solid system on paper
Something worth remembering that is very relevant to this issue (I think she has said it in her other Prager U videos but it is conspicuous in its absence here) is that Prager U in particular and conservatives more generally only view education through the lens of indoctrination. That's why their "educational" materials are so shitty. That's why their mission statement is to "instill correct values" rather than teaching kids to think critically and creatively about the world. That's why they are so defensive about anyone they not like being involved in education (clearly a gay teacher must be trying to indoctrinate students to either be gay themselves or accept gay people, that's the only reason they can conceptualize anyone becoming a teacher).
It's not because they're lazy (though they very well may be) that the assessments in their "courses" are simply multiple choice questions checking recall. They fundamentally believe that the benchmark of successful education is whether students start to parrot back everything they're being told.
Yep
Right wing psychology is rationalizing abuse in general. We'll have a monarch and morality police if we let them win electorally. They will absolutely groom your kids.
Well that’s how you prevent innovation. Not really going to help long-term.
@@DiamondKingStudiosDats capitalism Babeyyyyyy!! Who gives a shit about making money over a long period of time when you can just make a fuck ton of cash and let some other nerds deal with the fallout.
@@Nope-bl3ig “I’ll be dead when the chickens come home to roost; let it be my grandchildren’s problem!”
“Ed, didn’t our parents’ generation always talk about leaving behind a better future for their children?”
“Martha, dear, we are their children. Nothing of what I’m doing is wrong.”
As a teacher i cannot comprehend having enough time to do this but it also does not surprise me that these teachers would be asked to do something like this, our time is never respected ):
Why would your time be respected? Y'all are the last real union standing in the U.S. capital has a hellbent dedication to breaking you on the wheel of profits for the rich.
Y'all deserve so much more! Teaching is maybe the most important job in society but in this corporate hellscape of a country real education is a threat to the rich and powerful. Critical thinking will only ever lead to the conclusion that corruption is everywhere and greed is rampant.
@@Praisethesunson All those local unions making positive improvements in the lives of their workers? Fake unions.
While there aren't any OFFICIAL lessons happening in Illinois (at least to my knowledge), I had one teacher show a PragerU video about state tax, and it basically tried to show how the less wealthy people are being selfish by taking money away from the rich people in order to fund state amenities.
I once had a teacher that only played videos. They didn't teach in any other way and a lot of the videos seemed to be. false. I also remember the teacher mockingly doing an African accent (I wouldn't have guessed it was African if he didn't say).
It can really suck sometimes being on the side we're on. To prevent this garbage from indoctrinating kids, we have to get it right every. Single. Time. They just have to pitch it right once, get it passed and allowed in schools one time, and it opens the door and sets a sort of unofficial precedence.
Capital can try endlessly as long as they have the money.
Public journalism is so underrated, and that is so dangerous.
One little gem i found recently was The Urbanist based out of the Seattle area. Focuses on local things that might not be relevant to everyone but is a great indie advocacy newspaper dealing with transit, housing, and inequality
Yeah, there are some really great indie journalists around MA, too. But I know it's very hard for them to get by, and they get basically no support. But hey, if anyone here wants to support a local journalist and his bazillion FOIA requests, Andrew Quemere is great.
Factually with Adam Conover just had a good video on corporations killed journalism
"Three Dennis Prager monologues in a trench coat masquerading as something of actual academic value" is a sentence that goes way harder than it needed to
I hadn't heard that! That's hilarious!
Dennis Prager diss track when
Monologues in a trench coat? I would not expect a teacher, who is reading her words off a previously prepared script, to say a grammatically incorrect phrase like this.
@@TinLeadHammer maybe i'm just stupid but how is it grammatically incorrect?
New Hampshire has fallen
Texas has fallen
Florida has fallen
Montana has fallen
Oklahoma has fallen
Arizona has fallen
Louisiana has fallen
millions must receive terrible eduction
@@yayayayya4731 Billions*
@@quakeknight9680what is the meaning of this
@ThePenguinMan A meme based on dogwhistles from 4chan. The original post was something like "I saw a pretty white girl holding hands with a black guy... Its over, the west has fallen."
And you can guess what racist 4chan users think should happen to billions. Its just funny to use those slogans in equally stupid ways.
At least we can bless the Gulf state of Alabama and Missisipi for a while.
Cash course has to be on purpose. Crash Course is excellent, they are hoping to be confused for them.
Okay, so I missed the last few uploads with it, but the short hair is absolutely THE LOOK ❤
😊 thank you
it does look amazing! 😊
@@aubarlowe trueness
Issues with the actual course aside, my biggest problem with this whole situation is that it provides PragerU with legitimacy. It introduces them to children as something they should associate with the institution of education, borrowing that credibility and priming them to accept their other content as fact.
The military crafts are actually insane
Shout-out to Zoe's sister for the creepy and cool eyeball mug. I'm looking forward to seeing it in my nightmares.
I am slowly losing faith in the us just in general
Right? Like every night I go to sleep thinking "the plot could not POSSIBLY thicken any more. This soup is nearly a fucking rock at this point.". I wake up and surprise surprise I find yet another new thing that makes me wanna ditch the USA altogether
It’s not just the U.S. The reactionary wave has infected the entire world.
The bananas thing about PragerU is how well it fits into privatization of every other aspect of public life, where chronic, deliberate disinvestment in necessary services becomes the driving force for privatizers to come into a sector (like education), make a buck, and push a wild ideological agenda along the way. It's self-fulfilling AND self-reinforcing: a doom loop.
same
lucky I'm across the atlantic and studying in one of the top high schools of my country
@@arcticpossi_schw1siantuntija42yasss girl , show off while the world goes to shit 😍
Love them defending themselves like "We're not bigots! We're just Christian"😂
You might want to water down that stereotype. Not that I think there isn't merit to what you're saying. Just trying to do some collateral control.
@@Cool-Vest No😁
@@anothercub6958 Ya can't go around calling all Christians bigots. Not to say PragerU isn't. But that's a hurtful stereotype.
I say this not even being Christian myself. I'm just your average stereotype un-enjoyer.
@@Cool-Vest If you thought it was stereotyping all christians, that's on you.
You're really just doing a "not all men" here.
@@Cool-Vest If you thought it was stereotyping all christians, that's on you.
You're really just doing a "not all men" here.
I have a friend who's name is Пчёлкин, which basically means Bee (that's how I got to this channel in the first place, by the way) and he also uses 'if I had a nickel...' line.
So, if I had a nickel for every time Bee says 'if I had a nickel...', than I would have two nickels, which is not a lot but still wierd that happened twice.
If we're renaming schools after traitors again, let's try to petition a school district to rename a school *Benedict Arnold Secondary School*
How in the world was it okay for a lack of response from teachers used a basis for approval?
Sending teachers the content during summer break. Over a holiday weekend no less is just… unbelievable. As a teacher, I actively try to not obsessively check my email over the summer (for my own sanity) and I certainly wouldn’t be checking around a holiday.
Thanks to corporate data harvesting. PraguerU's owners can buy the info to find exactly when you and your fellow wages slaves are least likely to notice when they are trying to hustle you.
@@Praisethesunson I don't think it takes data harvesting to find out people will be least likely to check their email when they are on a lengthier break. Not that I think data harvesting is good or anything.
That’s weird 2 teachers with different points yet the same dislike. I saw another post that said that it would be a pain since they barely have any time. When would the best time be for educators?
I don't _hate_ the idea of school credit being given for extra curricular activity, but I am _deeply suspicious_ of it, conceptually. Beyond the funding issues, and beyond. Because this implies that hobbies are for reward, not for leisure, and I worry it will train kids to not do hobbies unless they can use it for a _hustle_ , in the same way that education often trains kids out of being curious, etc, because of how extrinsic rewards often replace intrinsic motivations when people are given extrinsic rewards for things they were intrinsically motivated to do hence why badge based gamification is dangerous unless applied carefully.
As a former NH public school student, this program has been really good, but is ripe for potential abuse. One way I know a lot of students took advantage of it was getting their PE/gym credits by either participating in sports or starting their own exercise regimen, and then presenting on it to confirm what they learned. That way, they can get their required gym credits, but don’t have to go through the tedium of dodgeball, capture the flag, and being shamed in front of your peers. But as we can see, people have found out how they can abuse this system to convince students to take courses from their very biased perspectives.
"Basic concepts of Judeo-Christian morality" = "personal responsibility" and "hard work"
Those are neither principal tenants of Judeo-Christian teachings and even if they were, they would not be exclusive to it.
Jesus famously demanded that people should bury themselves under mountains of debt to learn how to fish, actually.
They’re concepts in the Bible but not core concepts, and certainly not in the context of PraegerU’s goals.
Furthermore, personal responsibility and hard work were meant as a way to live the disciple life to dedicate your life to God, which does actually include helping other communities and not imposing whatever.
As much as it is cool that the Bible exists and has been surviving for 5000 years, I think there is a good reason nothing else has had such an uninterrupted line of continuity.
did that mug come from THE EYEBALL ZONE !?!?! 😄
Lord Oculon shall devour all
Biblical correct angel mug?
I can't wait for some old Christian lady to be like "OMG I LOVE YOUR CROSS EARR--......" and then realizes they're frickin' swords and quickly waddles away from you 😂😂
how come no right-wing influencers advertise Ground News. Might have something to do with their relationship to the truth
They used to, until they realized that it also called out their own BS, not just extreme leftists’
Some do.
I love the eyeball mug. The only thing that could make it better is that it was glazed. I think adding some color would make the eyeballs pop. Either way nice job Zoe's sister. Also, good video.
Thanks a bunch for covering this. I have watched a debunk of Prager U in a while and its important to remember how they just keep going.
Gotta love the Koch brother Funded think tank wielding its influence in this way. Its amazing how important boring things like public meetings minutes and the meetings themselves can be. Also love the Education Commissioner saying when it gets approved.
Also them doing something so innocuous as a financial literacy course is definitely about leveraging plausible deniability its an innocent foot in the door before they launch more insidious programs to dictate educational alternatives that set people up with rotten foundational understandings of a whole myriad of subjects. It just reinforces the Dennis Prager vision of the status quo and the reactionary nature of the United States.
The thing that always kills me about Randian so-called philosophy is it just strikes me as a justification of the status-quo. Ethical-Self Interest is a dressed up way of describing what rich people already act like. They just either have no interest in ethics or the complaints of regular people since we aren't wealthy enough to matter. This is kinda half-baked but I don't think Ayn Rand or anyone who subscribes to her thoughts is worth more than that in a youtube comment.
You hit the nail on the head. Preserving the status quo is the whole game. Anyway you get to that point is fine, as long as you get there.
Anny ranny is just a pretext. She didn't matter(she died poor and on social security). The status quo is not neutral. It benefits the people who own things at the direct expense of people who have to work to live.
The rich would love To maintain their wealth and privilege by asserting God said so. But industrial society is still too secular for that argument to convince the poors(you). For now anyway.
So instead they use BS like Atlas shuggied as pretext to keep hustling poors like you.
I am honestly terrified of the direction this country is heading.
I am terrified for America. I am also terrified that given time this company may attempt to spread it’s terrible values to other countries.
Oh I didn't consider that. Oh no...
It already did
It's been doing that since WWII at the latest. Probably before.
It's something I feel even more responsible for as an American. To me, we have even more of a responsibility to stand up against this BS. Because it is used to ideologically and violently colonize other countries.
join the international communist party
Zoe: *brings out the mug*
Me: *immediately tenses up, expecting thoughtslime to burst into frame, summoned by the eyeball zone*
Flabbergasted the response for kids to the question, 'Why do we pay taxes?' is, "Here's how to evade them!"
Shout out to Zoe's sister for her good taste in mugs
Heartbreaking. I went no contact with my father after he sent me an islamophobic PraguerU video with a ridiculous paragraph. It was the last straw after everything he's done and said to me. I hate his fear mongering
Was it that dear infidels one? I saw the title but was afraid to know what it was about
Someone pro palestine using the phrase "fear mongering" might be the craziest thing I've seen today.
@@hungryhyena783 how does you assuming someone being against genocide make them accurately using the phrase fear mongering ironic?
Cash Course is dangerously close to Crash Course: an actual educational UA-cam channel. I literally gagged
Crash course is good at Uni we watched two vids.
Tbh the fact they aren't making money with it should just make you more suspicious. If not money, what is their motivation? And yeah, it's influence. Power. ...which can coincidentally be leveraged for money, for example with their fossil fuel industry patrons.
Paying a review committee member to participate in a speaker series sounds and awful lot like what drug manufacturers did for pain doctors who happened to prescribe lots of opioids...
If financial lit by Dennis Prager is worth a credit then I want a PHD in history for all the Ken Burns they show on PBS. Now that I think of it I’d also like to be credentialed as a buildings inspector for the two seasons of “this old house” I made it through.
Don't you love it when the right say that bashing the left and forcing religion aren't political actions?
The eyeball mug rocks :)
I love the comment at 15:44 about keeping a checkbook balanced.
In my life I think I've written maybe 5 checks. The primary use of a check in my life has been to write "VOID" in big letters on one in order to set up direct deposit. What does balancing a checkbook even mean in the year 2024?
cheques were a stop gap until comms systems got good enough to facilitate mass direct transfers. The one advantage of cheques was being able to gift people cash in a slightly more abstracted and less gauche way 😂
@paultapping9510 - It means keeping your finances in order. A balanced checkbook shows that your deposits and your debits are equal to each other, so you haven't over spent or underspent your money. It's an old fashioned term in 2024, but the meaning is still important.
@@TrueOpinion99 I think what throws me off is that a literal checkbook is a hopelessly out-of-touch financial ledger.
Like, try to explain "floating a check" to someone under the age of 45.
@WilliamRoyNelson - Managing and recording your expenditures versus your income is outdated? Sure, the phrase may be a little out of vogue, but the meaning is important (and probably explained in the course).
@@TrueOpinion99 Balancing a checkbook, in any sense, is not part of the PragerU curriculum. The unit on Checking and Savings accounts is a 5-minute long video.
www.education.nh.gov/sites/g/files/ehbemt326/files/inline-documents/sonh/learn-everywhere-program-application-prageru-1.pdf
I really appreciate your thorough examination of issues like this. Your approach to video essays is the antithesis of 'the channel who shall not be named '. Thank you for the work you do!
COMPLETELY unrelated to your value as a person and a content creator, you're haircut is cute!
Shoutout to Zoe's sister and eyeball mugs!
It's scary to me how often hundreds (or even hundreds of thousands) of people can say "we don't want this" and people in power will just do it anyway. I have been in meetings at work or at public hearings in my city, and the overwhelming number of people will say "this is not a good idea" and the people in charge will say "we hear you, but we're doing it anyway." They seem to believe that they can "address objections" and that will convince people to change their minds. And if people don't change their minds, or at least shut up about it, they become a "danger" that needs to be stopped. It's annoying when it's a company deciding to buy a cheap content management system that's riddled with errors, but it's outright terrifying when it's your government deciding to supply a foreign country with weapons so they can commit a genocide. Public schools accepting PregarU is somewhere in between these things, but the overall pattern of decision makers ignoring what people want in order to do what benefits them is frightening.
An interesting snippet of context that nobody might know without knowing someone from Amherst, New Hampshire is how unconventional its high school is. Students are encouraged to refer to their teachers by first name, there is a period of the day dedicated to getting students who teachers perceive to be hanging out in different social circles to interact, and there is a graduation requirement to give a 30 minute presentation on a topic of your choosing, to be graded pass/fail by committee. So, it's interesting to me to see two comments from Amherst defending any mediocre online financial literacy course. Whether this is meant to show that parents/adults in town want to see more attention dedicated to financial literacy in a context vacuum or reflects in any way how these parents see their public schools is not for me to say.
Dang, I have friends from Amherst and didn't know about the first name thing. Also, your senior project presentation had to be 30 minutes? How were you guys supposed to stall for time for that long?
I think "inoffensive" is a major achievement for a PragerU production.
"Taxes are bad.... But pay 10% tithing!"
Our lessons aren't politically biased, we're only trying to teach Judeo-Christian morality
🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔
"I'm not biased, you're biased for thinking I'm biased!"
Making a cringey joke and then chuckling at you’re own bad joke is part of your brand at this point and I’m here for it
that email that says it "will help young people keep their checkbook balanced" cracked me the fuck up. how old is that person?? i'm guessing at LEAST 80. we don't need to do that anymore, grandma! we can check our bank balance and transaction history in about 90 seconds using the computer we keep in our fucking pocket
An actual financial literacy class can he benefital to students but yeah he does sound incredibly old and stupid with what he said lmao
@Tiny_Koi I agree but what he's advocating for is like if we had a whole course on how to use an abacus.
@rileyflack8010 - Do you know that checkbooks come with a table that helps you track your deposits and your debits? The purpose is to ensure that you haven't overspent or underspent your money. It's an old fashioned term for budgetting your expenditures (at least in part) so you don't overspend inadvertently.
Sure, you can check your back account on an app, but a physical budget (or, balance sheet) is always going to be far more helpful than just a quick glance at your phone.
@@TrueOpinion99 the point of "balancing your checkbook" wasn't as a budgeting tool, it was to not overdraw your account. to ensure that money going into your account was equal to or exceeding the money coming out. in modern times this is accomplished by checking your balance online.
budgeting is an entirely different process where you plan your purchases ahead of time. balancing your checkbook isn't helpful for that, as it is a record of transactions after the fact.
@DontMockMySmock - Even in modern times, you still need to track your expenditures to prevent overspending. A good budget will include an expenditure tracker...and the principles of "balancing your checkbook" still apply there.
Balancing your checkbook and budgeting your money are inexorably linked, even in 2024.
27:06 i love how much a one off joke from the first phineas and ferb movie has spread across the internet
Before it was commonly talked about and before realizing what it was, I started watching a lot of PragerU’s content in 2020, thinking it was educational since it used a lot of visual styles and script structures in common with my favorite science and history channels at the time. I can’t recall what exactly turned me off of their content but I shudder to think how close I came to being radicalized in the wrong direction.
Cool. The natural gas money spent on that propaganda paid off.
I remember them saying "obedient children are happy children" and immediately being disgusted because I know, firsthand, how wrong that is. Constantly being terrified of punishment is not 'happy' it's 'need therapy'.
@@JHorst-r2u constantly terrified of punishment is part of the ParguerU legal course.
@@Praisethesunson Yep, the doublespeak in their courses is astounding.
@@JHorst-r2u- You do know that you can raise obedient children without them needing therapy as adults, right? Even as adults, we still act in certain ways because we are fearful of the consequences.
Kids that are raised in households with standards that are consistently and fairly enforced do report higher rates of happiness and satisfaction...even when they get in trouble for not meeting said standards.
Far right propaganda in American schools has been the norm ever since the texas schoolbooks became the model for the country.
As a conservative, I thought long and hard about your comment. I eventually was convinced that the PragerU courses are PARTLY propagandic. However, propaganda isn't always tied to negative things. In this instance, I would say that the ideas PragerU presents to children are pro-American and overall very beneficial. I do not agree that religion should be taught so upfront like that in a public school but I don't think it's the end of the world. I would prefer the religion part about Judeo Christian bullshit to be left out ideally but it wouldn't destroy the U.S. if it were left in.
@@hungryhyena783
There is no beneficial element to PragerU, they're just grifters.
Instead of Cash Course, it should be called Crap Course.
I think it's really interesting that there was so much pushback in NH, because I don't necessarily expect a lot of people to be closely watching that sort of thing. I thought the story would be, it got snuck in while no one was paying attention. Heartening to know people *were* watching and dissenting, concerning to know it didn’t work.
This is still New England we're talking here, education is a fundamental value of the culture.
1 minute ago is crazy, and it's an Anti PragerU video, perfect
It's so annoying when a video (like this one) doesn't show up in my subscription feed for a full day but then when it does show up UA-cam slips it in chronologically as if it had been there the whole time. Quit trying to gaslight me UA-cam.
Any 'judeao-christian values' on the part of the producer should automatically be a ban from public use.
I have to wonder if NH just opened itself to lawsuits. PragerU openly said they want to teach judeo-christian morality. That seems problematic from a separation of church and state point of view.
Shoutout to Zoe's sister for her impeccable taste in mugs!
All I'm saying is that the solution was invented in France in 1789.
Hippity Hoppity Head-Chop-Offity!
Loved the doofenshmirstz reference lol
If I had a nickel every time she's done it, I would have at least 1.
Zoe...Ms. Bee...I don't know how you wish to be referred to. All I know is I am grateful for your videos, this stuff is important. It really scares me, it's stuff like this that makes anti-natalism look good, and what makes me fear for the wellbeing of my kids should I ever have any. I already feel like the education system failed me, I'm still trying to catch up on what school never nurtured in me, I don't want the same for my kids, it's why I'd rather homeschool them as opposed to sending them to school. Honestly I wish you could be my kids' teacher, you actually care about students and know how to better educate, I'd have complete faith in you.
I wish you the best in your education journey!
I do love the biblically accurate mug
There's this episode of Daria where the principal brings in soda machines and ads to the school in exchange for funding, and the public forum about this issue was held during the freaking Super Bowl. The deal ends up being disastrous for the students and faculty. Not sure what made me think of that...
Indeed a shout out to the mug. Great video.
Having people named "Edelblut" and "Streit" approving and defending PragerU is just a B-movie plot
I gasped when I got the notification for a new Zoe Bee video, and I literally screamed when I realised it was a video on Prager U
Edit: She even addressed Prager U's Econ 101, this is life ❤❤❤
Also, shout out to Zoe's sister and her eyeball mug, lol 😂
The NH Commissioner of education, Frank Edelblut, is the man responsible for approving PragerU as for credit educational material in New Hampshire.
"Evolution is a lie, cause it hurts my 'I'm so special' ego" - PragerU
24:20 it doesn’t even look like an iron dome interceptor lol. they really just wanted to jam that one in there
in my high school social studies class we used to watch PragerU videos as an example of right wing viewpoints. Like we would watch a more left wing video about trickle down economics and then we would watch a PragerU video and compare the differences and question why they were different and how they were shaped by an individuals background. Thats the only way I could see PragerU videos being used in schools.
The amount of shock i felt when my history teachee put on one of their videos is insane. I was so caught of guard and turned away from the lesson