The curious case of NEA priorities
By Alan Sears
Friday, August 25, 2006
It is, arguably, the most powerful union and lobbying group in the country. And you cannot envy what its members are up against.
Day after day, the National Education Association (NEA) sees the same statistics we do.
Plunging test scores. Floods of incoming college freshman who can’t read at even a sixth-grade level. Principals and school boards groping for incentives that will draw better teachers into lifelong service for high stress and infrequent appreciation.
Instead of embracing the joys of books and learning, America’s children are gorging junk food on the couch, dabbling with R-rated music videos and video games while their synapses run headlong down blind brain alleys.
Teacher morale remains low, as many grapple daily with parents who are disengaged and apathetic, neurotic or demanding, angry or eager to move their child into alternative educational settings.
Add to all that the professional pressures inherent in “No Child Left Behind,” and you can understand how the NEA leaders who gathered this summer in Orlando for their annual convention had their work cut out for them. The toughest question was undoubtedly the first one: where do we start, when it comes to fixing America’s schools?
Well, they figured it out. And, really, faced with so many incredible challenges, their priority makes sense. This is, after all, the NEA. They know the classroom. They know the teachers. They know the real challenges of education.
Which is why their elected leaders decided that, before anything else, the first thing our teachers have to do is win popular support for homosexual “marriage.”
That’s right. The all-knowing members of the NEA decided that what our kids need to know – more than math, geography, grammar, science, or computer skills – is what men and men see in each other, why women and women fall in love, and what our government and society “owes” those who practice homosexual behavior.
You can see why that kind of information is critical to a third grader, can’t you?
Of course not. The NEA didn’t think so. That’s why they’re taking the matter out of your hands. Listen, when the world’s largest teacher’s union elects to endorse same-sex “marriage,” they’re not talking tacit support. They’re talking posters and projects, classroom lectures and guest speakers, testimonials and textbooks – at every grade level, and in every public school, in every school district in America.
Questions, of course, accumulate. Among them:
What if a teacher or principal objects to same-sex unions, for reasons of personal faith or experience? What if said educator doesn’t want his (often mandatory) NEA dues going to support those who promote homosexual behavior? What if parents don’t want their children learning about sex (or sexual politics) at school? What if children are ill-equipped, mentally or emotionally, to handle the information presented by a zealous instructor?
Either the NEA has considered, and dismissed, these questions – in which case the group that wants to exert the most significant impact on America’s teachers, parents, and children turns out to have no real concern or compassion for our teachers, parents, or children... or else the union has not considered these crucial questions, in which case... ditto.
Either way, the academic needs of children are no longer as much a priority for this organization as the political agenda of those who engage in homosexual behavior.
Actually, that’s not anything new for the teachers’ union. The NEA has been working hand-in-glove for years with aggressive promoters of homosexual behavior. Indeed, former NEA president Bob Chase is a member of the board of GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Educational Network), and once defended NEA’s force-feeding of the homosexual agenda to children by warning that:
“Some critics want the public schools to be an agent of moral doctrine, condemning children and adults when they are not in accord with Biblical precepts.”
But if the NEA objects to teaching moral doctrines … how do they justify teaching immoral doctrines? If they’re against teaching creationism, for example, for its spiritual implications, how can they favor sex education classes that indoctrinate even very young children with homosexual advocacy?
How can they bar prayers, ministers and Christian clubs from campus, while organizing school assemblies, demonstrations, and classroom visits featuring homosexual and transgender “role models?”
Clearly, the NEA has rejected its prima facie identity as the representative of America’s teachers, in favor of a new raison d’etre: brainwashing schoolchildren into acceptance of, and even indulgence in, homosexual behavior. For the union’s leaders, there will be no rest until families all over the country not only acknowledge, but embrace and endorse the homosexual agenda.
It’s as simple as A-B-C. What those pressing that agenda cannot win at the ballot box, they will win in the minds of the next generation... one vulnerable child at a time.
Alan Sears, a former federal prosecutor who held various posts in the departments of Justice and Interior during the Reagan Administration, is president and CEO of the Alliance Defense Fund, a legal alliance defending the right to hear and speak the Truth through strategy, training, funding, and litigation.
Copyright © 2006 Salem Web Network.
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