An Ohio school assigned students videos from a right-wing site with claims about a gender pay gap and Islam
- Students at Maumee High School in Ohio were assigned clips from PragerU, a right-wing nonprofit that publishes videos containing falsities and potentially marginalizing information.
- One of the videos reported by the outlet argues there is no gender pay gap, and another video, titled "Is Islam a Religion of Peace?" uses examples of violence committed by Muslim terrorists to argue for the reformation of the entirety of Islam.
- The assignments were struck from the curriculum after the Huffington Post, which reported the news, reached out to the school about the videos.
An extra credit assignment asked students in an Ohio high school to watch and respond to right-wing videos titled "Build the Wall" and "The Left Ruins Everything," the Huffington Post reported.
The clips were created by PragerU, a right-wing organization that publishes "exceptional video content that advances Judeo-Christian values," according to its website. The videos, each about five minutes in length, regularly feature conservative commentators like Candace Owens and Ben Shapiro.
The videos were assigned to students at Maumee High School, which is located about 10 miles from Toledo, Ohio.
Many videos on the PragerU site promote false claims. One of the videos on its site argues there is no gender pay gap, a concept that data and analyses have previously confirmed numerous times. Another video, titled "Is Islam a Religion of Peace?" uses examples of violence committed by Muslim terrorists to argue for the reformation of the entirety of Islam.
One teacher assigned videos like these to her classes this year and last year, HuffPost reported.
A parent who learned of the assignments told the outlet that when she complained to school administrators, she was met with ambivalence.
"When I talked to the principal and vice principal, they acted like this was just another assignment," said Andrea Cutway, a mother to a 16-year-old student who had watched the videos. Cutway pulled her daughter out of the class whose teacher assigned the extra credit, according to HuffPost.
School administrators eventually removed the assignment from the syllabus after the outlet reached out to the school.
"We believe that students deserve a balanced presentation of content," district Superintendent Todd Cramer told HuffPost. "We support our educators in using a variety of instructional tools and materials. We expect our educators to exercise good judgment and trust our students, parents and community to engage our staff in conversations about our instructional methods and the materials being used if they feel the need to do so."
Maumee High School, in response to a request for comment from Insider, said it offered "an alternative assignment" to students when a parent brought up the matter.
"Our first goal was to ensure the student would be comfortable fully participating in the curriculum. Additionally, the extra credit assignment was removed from the class syllabus. All of this occurred before the Huffington Post contacted the District," the statement from Maumee continued.
"We believe that students deserve a balanced presentation of materials and we support our educators in using a variety of instructional tools and materials in their teaching, expecting them to always exercise good judgement. We take pride in preparing students for a successful future including the ability to listen to as well as express and support their own viewpoints."
Cutway was among several parents who were concerned that the ideas promoted in these videos would marginalize immigrant students and LGBT people, HuffPost reported.
"This really is some scary stuff," she told the outlet. "I do feel like [PragerU] found a way to get into the public school system."
PragerU has jumped into the spotlight in recent years for arguing that Big Tech was attempting to sideline conservative ideas.
In 2017, PragerU sued YouTube for flagging its videos as "inappropriate," arguing that the platform had violated its First Amendment Rights. A judge dismissed the case, saying YouTube, whose parent company is Google, isn't bound by the First Amendment and is free to remove what it deems to be offensive content.
On its website, PragerU says its videos have been watched more than 4.2 billion times so far. PragerU did not respond to a request for comment.
Read the full HuffPost report here.
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