World history students in Philadelphia’s public high schools begin a unit about “The Gilded Age and Progressivism” with the question: “What do you need to overthrow oppression?”
The answer outlined in the class curriculum skirts any complexity about the era in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century when industrialization ushered in vast economic, political, and social change. Instead, here is what Philadelphia’s Office of Curriculum and Instruction said students should conclude: “ ‘New horizons of industry’ lead to ‘greed and exploitation.’ ”
The curriculum is recommended only to teachers, which means they have the power to decide whether to follow it in their classrooms. But some teachers said the curriculum’s mere existence shows that Philadelphia public schools are fixated on teaching history through an “oppressed versus oppressor” framework.