State Rep. John Carson

A radical curriculum shift in Philadelphia schools is raising serious concerns about antisemitism and historical accuracy. The School District of Philadelphia is the eighth-largest school district in the United States, serving nearly 200,000 students. It has also become a hotbed of antisemitism. CAMERA’s report, Shaping Minds, Spreading Hate: How Antisemitism Took Root in the School District of Philadelphia, documents how sweeping curriculum changes driven by ideology have shifted the district away from teaching history chronologically and toward narratives that attack Western values and institutions. Key changes: SDP reshaped the entire social studies curriculum from chronological to thematic and now focuses on “the three sins of Western civilization”: capitalism, racism, and settler colonialism. It excludes world-shaping events such as the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, both world wars, and the Cold War. It elevates and whitewashes Islamic history. Lessons include an excerpt from Sharia law highlighting its promotion of “equitable financial transactions,” with no further context. Another lesson presents “jihad” as a just war theory. A lesson encourages students to conclude that the U.S. and Israel are “perpetrators of terrorism.” The move toward an “anti-racist, decolonizing curriculum” has encouraged teachers to openly attack Israel, Zionism, and the United States in their classrooms and on social media when communicating with students. This is not education. This is indoctrination.