If you were designing a curriculum to teach high school students about the last few decades of American history, what might you include?
The health-care reform debates of the 1990s that continue today? The terrorist attack on Sept. 11, 2001, and its aftermath? Barack Obama’s history-making election as America’s first African-American president? Perhaps recent events might reinforce the need to understand the North American Free Trade Agreement debates, so they can more fully understand the current debates over trade.
All of this is part of the ninth-grade curriculum, posted online, in the Lower Dauphin School District, a small school system near Harrisburg, Pa. But in the School District of Philadelphia, the largest in the state and the eighth-largest in the country, with some 200,000 students, things are very different. The “essential question” is whether a student can decide: “Based on her history, what is America’s identity?”
The Philadelphia school district’s curriculum is not posted online. However, it was recently leaked to journalists at The Free Press by a concerned teacher.
In this curriculum, nearly all the “essential questions” in this section are variations of the same inquiry about groups and identity, designed to elicit a specific response. None of the questions addresses “history” as traditionally understood. Instead, they focus on subjective, polarizing questions about identity and group influence, attempting to construct a grand narrative, such as “What are the political, social and cultural responses to the question of liberty and justice for all?”
This stark contrast between the curricula is ubiquitous. Lower Dauphin, for example, discusses “What were the significant economic and social changes for rural and urban America during the Gilded Age?” Which is essentially what the AP United States History Exam wants students to learn. While the Philadelphia curriculum asks, “What do you need to overthrow oppression?”
SDP’s lack of focus on what most people would consider history may perplex many Americans, but for its creators, this is a feature, not a flaw. The director of social studies curriculum in the Philadelphia schools, Ismael Jimenez, views his role as that of an activist. A look through his social media, along with the numerous podcasts, blog posts and other materials he regularly shares, reveals his intent to guide students in understanding history from a predetermined, subjective and highly politicized perspective on America and the wider world.
Jimenez barely bothers to conceal his disdain for anyone who might have a different opinion, declaring them “white tears,” or for those who believe that anyone but his class of ideologically fringe teachers would have any significant influence over what students are taught. One meme he shared on social media, commenting on the debate over critical race theory, makes it explicit that he is uninterested in what decisions are made in regards to where and how it should be taught, as: “Veteran teachers” are planning to “teach that s**t anyway,” according to Jimenez.
The bulk of his public utterances show that the primacy of activist teachers like himself is unaccountable and uncontrollable, and is key to his worldview. “All real education is political,” reads one social media post. Others praise overt Communists such as Assata Shakur, a convicted cop killer who fled to Cuba and is still wanted by the FBI.
Understanding how these things influence the thinking of Jimenez and other teachers in the district is key to understanding the wider issue.
Of course, no teaching is truly neutral. Choosing what to teach within the limited time available will always carry some political implications. However, that’s not the same as claiming that teachers with fringe views should disregard laws, policies or community standards simply because they disagree with them. There’s a reason Jimenez’s curriculum isn’t posted on the school district’s website. He and his allies understand it would draw unwanted attention from those outside their bubble.
A fair-minded debate on what should be taught in schools, when and at what level these decisions should be made is an ongoing discussion. It is a longstanding (and correct) practice that the federal government should not dictate local curricula. The extent to which state and local governments should control school districts and teachers is a nuanced question, one that doesn’t have an easy answer. But highly activist teachers and administrators, elected by no one, should not be allowed to run roughshod over parents, students, regulators and legislatures. And they should not run roughshod over civil rights concerns.
The civil rights of students and families in SDP are a genuine concern. SDP was flagged by the Biden administration’s U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights for having a significant problem with antisemitism. While the curriculum does not mention Jews or Israel per se, replete throughout the curriculum is the binary option of painting various groups as oppressors or oppressed, and disdain for “settler colonialism,” a loaded term that, as writer Adam Kirsch noted in his recent book, On Settler-Colonialism: Ideology, Violence and Justice, often leads to the demonization of Israel and Jews, and even to a critique of America itself.
It is a matter of public record that many teachers in SDP are openly involved in anti-Israel events and curriculum development, and oppose teaching “both sides,” believing that only teaching the pro-Palestinian narrative is acceptable. Local Hindus say SDP’s curriculum perpetuates “egregious stereotypes” about their community as well.
This is not only about Philadelphia. This issue is apparent in California, Illinois and even Texas. It’s hard to know for sure how many places, when so many districts keep their curricula hidden from the public eye.
Teaching gives students the best information possible and encourages them to draw their own conclusions. Indoctrination, on the other hand, tells students, explicitly or implicitly, what conclusion to draw. Like, say, requiring students to find a song to replace the national anthem, instead of asking them whether the student thinks it should be replaced.
Yes, that is something the Philadelphia curriculum demands students do. Mercifully, in Lower Dauphin, such a dictate is absent.