Welcome to NEA-dominated schoolhouse
Don Feder
As millions of children head back to class this week, members
of the National Education Association will be at the
schoolhouse door, waiting to warp impressionable minds. Between
them, the NEA and the American Federation of Teachers (its
ideological twin) represent upward of 85 percent of the
nation's public school teachers. In terms of shaping the
content of public education, the NEA is more powerful than all
the school committees and education boards in the land.
As its 2001 national convention demonstrated, the NEA's
platform is indistinguishable from the agendas of the ACLU or
People For the American Way. Little wonder that last year the
NEA sent more delegates to the Democratic National Convention
than the state of California.
A popular button spotted at the association's Los Angeles
assembly read, "Jesus loves ya, Dubya, everyone else thinks
you're an (obscenity)." Thus do progressive educators teach
tolerance and show their respect for the office of president.
When it comes to protecting public education's monopoly status,
the NEA functions as a medieval guild. Predictably, the
convention passed resolutions deploring charter schools,
vouchers, home schooling and standardized tests, while
demanding substantial increases in education funding.
But the NEA also took stands on issues not remotely related to
education. It supported statehood for the District of Columbia,
comparable worth legislation, abortion and "proscriptive"
(confiscatory) gun control, but opposed official English and
space-based defense.
The NEA's political program translates into indoctrination in
the schools. In La-La land, the guild embraced
multiculturalism, global education, environmental education and
race, gender and sexual-orientation studies.
All of these courses are based on dubious premises and designed
to advance a cause. One side of the argument is treated as
received wisdom, the other essentially ignored.
In its resolution on environmental education, the NEA pledged
to push courses promoting "the concept of interdependence of
humanity and nature," "an awareness of ... population growth
... on human survival" (but no consideration of the
contributions of population increases to productivity),
"solutions to such problems as ... global warming, ozone
depletion" and acid rain (which science has yet to establish as
problems) and participation in Earth Day celebrations.
All that's missing is a demand that Al Gore's "Earth in the
Balance" be adopted as a textbook and a call for teachers to
collect contributions for Earth First.
In another of its knee-jerk resolutions, the NEA declared "the
struggles of working men and women to establish unions ...
should be an integral part of the curriculum in our schools."
They're not talking about teaching the history of organized
labor, but getting kids to love and trust union bosses.
In 1997, the California Federation of Teachers came up with a
swell way to introduce grade-schoolers to the Jimmy Hoffa
worldview. The federation is an AFT affiliate, but the
curriculum it devised (called "Yummy Pizza Company") has been
endorsed by the NEA.
Kids role-play as workers who make pizzas. Management (the
teacher) cuts their wages and increases their hours. The
children are then encouraged to organize, engage in collective
bargaining and go out on strike. Since the NEA is the largest
union in America, and its members frequently strike for higher
wages, there's more than a little self-interest at work here.
Students are also given problems to solve. One involves a
business called "Kids for Hire," owned by Mr. Ink, which
employs children to cut lawns, wash cars and baby-sit. Ink pays
them less than he charges his customers (otherwise known as
capitalism -- a concept teachers, as government workers, are
probably unfamiliar with). The kids think it's unfair. Mr. Ink
tells them to quit if they're dissatisfied.
But he's the only employer who'll hire them, the lesson plan
instructs. (Are the kids incapable of offering these services
on their own?) Students are asked, "What do you think the
children should do?" Oh, go on strike, slash Ink's tires, throw
rocks through his windows, and beat up scabs.
Lenin said give me a child for the first five years of his life
and he'll be mine thereafter. The NEA has your child for 12
years. Vouchers are looking better and better all the time.
©2001 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
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