A press release from group states, "This fall in schools across America, students will be watching PragerU videos in their classrooms as states officially make PragerU an approved educational resource."
Despite its name, PragerU is not an accredited academic institution, nor does it issue degrees.
Slaves did (very rarely) get paid (typically the equivalent of pocket change). Manumission did exist on the "charity" of a small number of slavers in the cases of a small number of slaves who they had "mercy" on, though typically I think how it went in the rare cases it was allowed was that a slave did work for their slaver and was permitted on their free time to have a job in town (where, because they were a slave, their options were both artificially and practically limited and they were paid much less than a white person or even a freed slave).
But to use this non-legalized ritual that describes a tiny minority of cases within a paradigm of industrialized exploitation as though it was a saving grace or even a mitigating consideration would be truly unhinged. Manumission did exist in the legal framework of Ancient Rome* as something of a right of a slave, so there it could be called a mitigation because it was actually a codified part of the system and not a quirk of the whims of some masters.
*I think there have also been similar practices elsewhere but I am not specifically aware of them and I don't think it existed in any form of Ancient Greece beyond the cases of "mercy".
Even in grade school the history books talking about slavery in ancient Rome spent a lot of undue time talking about the wonderful exceptions and the way some slaves freed themselves (thought gladiatorial combat or other Survivorship Bias means) to make it seem less fucked up.
Oh definitely, though I remember receiving emphatic stories also about some holiday in the Aztec Empire where slaves could free themselves via foot race for some reason.
This is just a guess, but on a continent without horses a guy who can run really fast is really useful to have around, and hard to keep as a slave if you want to make use of that skill