Live from Music Row Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed the director of outreach for PragerU, Jill Simonian, to the newsmaker line to discuss the one year anniversary of their new platform for kids at prageru.com/kids.
Leahy: We welcome to our newsmaker line our good friend Jill Simonian with Prager University. Good morning, Jill. How are you?
Simonian: Good morning, Michael. I got to tell you, I’m on the west coast, so I’m up early, but I’m good. (Laughs)
Leahy: 5:18 a.m. The sun has not risen yet and the west coast has it?
Simonian: Correct.
Leahy: But it’s going to be a comfortably warm day, I would guess.
Simonian: Yes. It’s going to be beautiful. It’s going to be beautiful.
Leahy: Prager University does such great work. What’s the latest news out of Prager University?
Simonian: So I wish that I was there in person with you because if I was, I would be delivering a birthday cake to enjoy. PragerU Kids is officially one year old. We’re celebrating our first birthday next week.
So I’m going to be passing out cakes to anyone and everyone. And PragerU kids started literally, like I said, one year ago. And we’ve now produced over 100 books, digital magazines, shows, videos, resources, content for children kindergarten through 12th grade, teaching them about our American history and values. And it’s an accomplishment we’re really excited about and we’re just getting started.
Leahy: Now let’s talk about PragerU Kids. How do kids get this information? Because if you go to a public government school, it seems that if it’s not woke propaganda, they have no interest in sharing that information with their students.
Simonian: Yes. 100 percent. And that’s exactly why PragerU started doing kids’ content. And that’s why they brought me on to help them. And the team tried to do that. All of our videos are free. Just like all of our PragerU videos are free online for everyone to view.
Parents, teachers, anyone you want. All of our shows are on prageru.com/kids and everything is free. So what we did is we created all of this because we know that our public schools are focused on things like social justice, gender identity, far left Marxist ideas.
We know that our kids are not getting the history and the values and the celebration of American exceptionalism that really is paramount to giving kids a good education. I mean, we want to give our kids a value-based education for the future of our country.
So all of our videos are free. And I got to tell you a lot of home school parents use it. But our shows are specifically made for the families that are in public school that might not have the resources to pull their kids out of government schools and home school them so that a parent like me can give my elementary school daughters a five or 10-minute video after school and say, hey, take a look at this video about Clara Barton.
Take a look at this video about the Berlin Wall coming down with Ronald Reagan. Or read this magazine about Abigail Adams and learn what it was like for one of the first dare I say, I don’t want to say the word feminist, but learn what Abigail Adams did for our country and the founding of our country with her husband, John Adams. It’s for parents with kids in public school, too.
Simonian: Prageru.com/kids. Now you work very closely with Dennis Prager, right?
Simonian: Yes. Sometimes I don’t see him often, but he recently read an episode of our Story Time series called Otto’s Tales. We have a book series called Otto’s Tales, which is his dog. If you watch the Dennis Prager Fireside Chat, his dog, Otto is sort of a co-star with him.
We have a children’s version of Otto, a big character that tells stories for our youngest learners about American values. And Dennis was just a guest reader on our Storytime episode all about his coined phrase of the American Trinity.
Our motto is printed on every coin. And he is so adorable. I hope that’s not weird to say, but he is so adorable reading the story for kindergarten-aged kids.
Leahy: In terms of getting this information to parents and kids, how effective has it been getting out there? Is it a little bit like just trying to put a finger in one of the dikes that hold up the water from coming in from the ocean?
Simonian: It’s a little bit like that. Yes, it’s a little bit like that. Our biggest mission is to just amplify how important it is for all of us parents to start waking up, to pay attention, to take an active role in our kids’ education, to essentially assert our parents our fundamental parental rights, to say we are going to take an active role in our kids’ education.
And I’ll tell you, in the last year, we’ve amassed about 250,000 subscribers to get our PragerU Kids shows delivered in their email inbox every week. And so parents and teachers who want to do that can subscribe and be notified every time new kids show release.
We have a couple of new releases that happen every week. And then we also have this membership group for people who want to do more than watch, as we say, who want to support the show, to continue to be made and to keep them free, because we are a nonprofit and that’s our PragerU Kids membership program.
And we have about 20,000 parents and teachers who are in that membership program who have graciously donated to keep our shows free and are included in the discussion group together to discuss different issues that are happening in their different school districts across the country and share information about how to combat some of these radicalized things showing up in our education.
Leahy: What are some of those ways to combat it, in your view?
Simonian: Volunteering in the classroom. And I know that the shutdowns, particularly in California, really squelched parental involvement in the classroom.
But I always say and this was something that I experienced firsthand, too, because my kids were in a previously stellar public school until my own eyes were opened as a parent and I thought. Wait a second. What is this?
Listen to the full interview here:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
