Parents shouldn’t need the help of Congress to see their children’s school curriculum

A House Education and Workforce Committee staff report says Philadelphia school personnel used social studies lessons to promote political causes, prompting renewed calls for parents to have access to classroom materials. The article argues that parents should not have needed help from an advocacy group, a teacher and congressional investigators to find out what their children were being taught.

The report describes an assignment asking pupils to honour a resistance movement that included the Great March of Return, and an exercise asking them to identify the United States and Israel as terrorist states. Philadelphia’s superintendent said the curriculum did not indoctrinate pupils, but told investigators he had not known it included materials from an ideological group led by district employees. The district said it would use national experts to help standardise teaching and had begun termination proceedings against its social studies curriculum director; the article calls for searchable public access to curricula, assignments and resources.