What has happened to the Philadelphia public school system?<\/p>\n
A high school teacher I know informed me that the school where he works has a principal with far-left views.\u00a0While that in itself is not surprising, this particular woman apparently wants all the teachers at the school to adopt her political beliefs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
My friend confessed that he was \u201cbeing marginalized by the principal of the school.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m pretty sure it is politically related, i.e. she thinks I am not onboard with her far-left views,\u201d he added.\u00a0\u201cI can\u2019t prove it but it seems the most likely reason.\u00a0 But like many on the far left, they say they believe in diversity but in practice they don\u2019t accept any deviance from leftist orthodoxy.\u201d<\/p>\n
He went on to say that his public high school is making a huge deal out of Ramadan. \u201cBut of course no mention is ever made of Lent. At the peak of the pro-Palestine rallies, the principal allowed students to leave school carrying Palestinian flags to protest downtown. Lately, the same principal has been allowing students to leave school early to protest ICE.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Novelist Lionel Shiver, whose latest novel, \u201cA Better Life,\u201d details the bitter consequences of a progressive New York woman who invites a migrant to live with her family, told Douglas Murray in an interview, \u201cWe need a CATASTROPHE\u2019 to save the West from illegal migration and woke culture.\u201d That might very well be true, since woke culture is a luxury culture that will be the first go given a planetary disaster.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the meantime, what will happen to Philadelphia if every city public school is indoctrinating its students in leftist ideology?<\/p>\n
That ideologically crazy principal my teacher friend talks about should be fired. But how can that happen when so many high schools in the city are doing the same thing?<\/p>\n
Edison High School is one example. This month, 6ABC reported that students at that Hunting Park school were allowed to leave class to attend an ICE protest. In January 2026, a similar situation occurred at Girard College.<\/p>\n
We might also ask why these schools are going out of their way to promote Islam. These schools go out of their way to create designated prayer spaces and fasting rooms for Muslim students. Why? Imagine if a group of Catholic students wanted a space to pray the rosary. Do you think a leftist high school principal would honor such a request?\u00a0<\/p>\n
To date there are two official Muslim holidays in Philly public schools, Eid-al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha.\u00a0The latter holiday was added later. Is a third addition on the way? \u00a0<\/p>\n
And yet there\u2019s something strangely attractive about a religion that makes its adherents stand out. Unfolding a colorful prayer mat in a parking lot at sunset and kneeling down among parked cars is not only great theater, it provides an ad hoc advertisement for the religion itself.<\/p>\n
The behavior of most Christians and Jews in the public square is mostly invisible, whereas Muslims aren\u2019t afraid to show their faith in places that might\u2013 by any definition \u2014 be deemed queer or \u201cinappropriate\u201d: shopping malls, the hallways of hospitals, the cereal aisle in a grocery store or parking lots.<\/p>\n
Unlike Dearborn, Michigan, where the Arab Muslim majority population stands at 55 percent of the city\u2019s 110,000 residents, Philadelphia\u2019s homegrown Muslim population has not caused it to be called \u201cMuslim Town\u201d and the \u201cMecca of the West.\u201d The overwhelming majority of Muslims in Philadelphia are not Middle Eastern but black Muslims. Ironically, black Muslims continue to be disparaged by Middle Eastern Muslims as wannabe or \u201cfake\u201d Muslims. (If you doubt my word on this, just talk to a so-called \u201creal\u201d Muslim from the Middle East).\u00a0<\/p>\n
Philadelphia, as it becomes an increasingly black majority city, will in time have many more Muslims than it does in 2026. Someday, in fact, the city may rival Dearborn, only in Philadelphia\u2019s case the Muslim growth will be homegrown.\u00a0<\/p>\n
My teacher friend also had this to say:<\/p>\n
\u201cWe [in the public schools] cannot say Easter but over the school loudspeaker they have no problem announcing the \u2018Holy month of Ramadan.\u2019 Students are allowed to leave class to pray.\u00a0A special area is set aside for that to happen. I wonder what would happen if Protestants asked for a Bible prayer group!\u00a0Why don\u2019t the church \/ state rules \u2014 the separation of church and state \u2014 apply to Muslims?\u00a0It\u2019s also a shame that so few children in Philadelphia identify as Christian. Their parents should demand equal time.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The situation is far worse in Britain, where freedom of expression is heavily restricted and Christianity is approaching extinction.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I recently read a 2024 Action News report about a family that enrolled their 12-year-old daughter in a Philadelphia Catholic school before their conversion to Islam. Initially the family knew of the school\u2019s prohibition against the wearing of head coverings. Later, however, during the month of Ramadan, the daughter went to school in a head covering but was told by officials at St. Francis de Sales Catholic school in Southwest Philadelphia that she could not wear her khimar, given that it was against the rules as outlined in the school\u2019s handbook which is distributed to all families at the beginning of the school year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The family staged a protest but eventually transferred their daughter to another school when the Catholic school would not give in.<\/p>\n
Thom Nickels is Broad + Liberty\u2019s Editor at Large for Arts and Culture and the 2005 recipient of the AIA Lewis Mumford Award for Architectural Journalism. He writes for City Journal, New York, and Frontpage Magazine. Thom Nickels is the author of fifteen books, including \u201cLiterary Philadelphia\u201d and \u201dFrom Mother Divine to the Corner Swami: Religious Cults in Philadelphia.\u201d His latest work, \u201cIleana of Romania: Princess, Exile and Mother Superior,\u201d will be published in May 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What has happened to the Philadelphia public school system? A high school teacher I know informed me that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":128123,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[35589,7600,62421,227,26740,50854,20743,69,71,70,23941,60542,12441],"class_list":["post-135427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-catholic-schools","tag-christianity","tag-edison-high-school","tag-education","tag-islam","tag-lent","tag-middle-east","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-philadelphia-schools","tag-progressivism","tag-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135427\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/128123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}