House Education and Workforce Committee Report Names Philadelphia School Materials: District to Centralize Social Studies Curriculum Writing
PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania — The School District of Philadelphia, in Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania, was named in an investigative report released on October 21 by the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce. The committee said its investigation found antisemitic content and political indoctrination in some Philadelphia classroom materials; the report also covers California's Berkeley Unified School District and the National Education Association. The findings described here are the committee's own conclusions, with responses from both sides presented below.
Committee Chairman Tim Walberg said the investigation found a world history assignment asking students to honor a resistance movement, listing a Hamas-endorsed campaign as an option, and another lesson asking students to label the United States and Israel as terrorists. He said parents send their children to school to learn reading, writing and math, not to be taught to hate Israel or embrace radical political causes, and that Jewish students deserve to feel safe in their classrooms. The committee said it launched the investigations after antisemitic incidents surged following Hamas's October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel; according to the Anti-Defamation League, antisemitic incidents in K-12 schools increased by 135 percent in 2023.
The committee said that after years of complaints, the Philadelphia district told the committee it would stop allowing teachers and administrators to write social studies curricula and would instead centralize that work, and that its social studies curriculum director is undergoing termination proceedings. Amy Spitalnick, CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, responded in an October 21 statement that countering antisemitism presents real challenges, but that a number of the report's claims were new to her organization despite its year of partnership with the NEA on antisemitism programming, and that a report that misrepresents or ignores work done to date serves a political agenda rather than the interests of Jewish students and educators. The committee said it will continue its investigations. (GSM, based on the House Education and Workforce Committee release and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs statement)
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 美国国会大厦西侧资料图。图片：Architect of the Capitol，公共领域，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / The U.S. Capitol, west front, file photo. Photo: Architect of the Capitol, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
