Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rambi who wrote (26877)	12/10/1998 3:22:00 PM
From: Rambi	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

jbe and nihil, I went to the Electric Library to check on the NEA and found the following---which may be why Bob feels as he does and where I got the impression that the NEA is part of the New Think in Education reform that I do not endorse. The article is from The New Republic and is about the merger of the AFT and NEA. It leaves one with the feeling that the NEA is a PC type political org. which is fine, but shouldn't be pushing (if it is) its political views in the classroom. For its part, the NEA is even more deeply split--among people mired in what remains of its traditionally friendly, rural schoolmarm ethos of school management, those who ambivalently want to be both union members and professionals, and those who are with Chase in the search for that new unionism. Worse, the inertia generated by the ambivalence in the NEA is exacerbated by other imponderables, particularly the fact that the NEA, in the words of one friendly critic, "has gone absolutely wacko with political correctness." The organization has rigid ethnic quotas throughout its governance and management structure. Rules require a minimum of 20 percent minority representation on each committee, as well as on the board of directors and the executive committee, and an effort to achieve ethnic proportionality in all staff positions--all of which produces an endemic unwillingness to take on tough issues. For example, at one recent joint meeting, AFT members raised tough questions about failing inner-city schools. As one participant described the reaction, "the NEA staffers came away shaking their heads that such issues should be raised at all. They don't even like talking about those things because they're afraid someone will be offended." In the last national AFT conventions over which he presided, Shanker also often warned his cheering members about going overboard in the attempt to include all handicapped children--even those who are dangerous and disruptive--in mainstream classrooms. The NEA has ducked the issue. Meanwhile, in order not to offend its activists, the nea takes positions on scores of issues that bear only the vaguest relationship to the central mission of the schools--from endorsement of the "accurate portrayal" of the roles and contributions of gays and lesbians "throughout history," to statehood for the District of Columbia, to the need for a single-payer health care system. The NEA even supported a boycott of Florida orange juice after Anita Bryant, at the time a chief spokesperson for the industry, made some remarks that were deemed homophobic. The proposed governance structure for the new entity does not impose numerical quotas, although it promises that the union will remain committed "to maintain--and expand--current AFT and NEA levels of minority representation throughout leadership, governing [sic] and staff." There is also a promise for "the expansion of all governing bodies [to] help ensure adequate minority representation." I also found an article about the NEA being involved with OBE but I felt the source was very questionable so won't quote it. Anyway- I violate my own rules when I condemn an organization in toto. So I return to my approach of taking on individual issues...one at a time....