The unions and their leaders are more agenda-driven, anti-parent, and hypocritical than ever.
This has been an egregious year for the country’s teachers unions. Okay, you may be thinking, so what else is new? But 2023 has exposed them as hypocrites par excellence.
The National Education Association convention in July provides myriad examples. While one might think a gathering of teachers would be concerned with the lack of literacy in public school students, he would be dead wrong. This year’s NEA convention in Florida was strictly political, and sex- and gender-obsessed ideas were front and center.
This year’s New Business Items (messages of concern from the hoi-polloi to the NEA aristocracy) were indicative. For instance, NBI 4 asserts, “The NEA will inform states and locals of the following sample language that may be put in contracts and policies that is LGBTQIA+ inclusive. The language will be as follows: ‘Parental leave’ instead of ‘maternity leave,’ ‘parent’ instead of ‘mother’ or ‘father,’ ‘birthing parent’ instead of ‘mother’ or ‘father,’ and ‘non-birthing parent’ instead of ‘mother’ or ‘father.’”
NBI 88 wants the NEA to declare a national educator day of action whose purpose is to rally – among other things – to “protect LGBTQIA+ students and educators including the right to gender-affirming care…and stop book bans.”
And speaking of “banned” books, the NEA’s “Great Summer Reads for Educators” included kiddie porn like Gender Queer, which graphically depicts young people indulging in various kinds of sex. (Interestingly, this “banned book” is available on Amazon and in local public libraries. The union’s snit is over the fact that parents do not want the book in school libraries – just as Playboy and Penthouse do not grace their shelves).
The NEA also released a toolkit that offers teachers suggestions on how to circumvent rules that require them to call a student by their given name rather than a chosen “transgender” name.
Also, according to the most recent LM-2 form submitted by the NEA to the IRS, the union raked in $377 million in dues and agency fees during 2021. However, a mere $32 million was earmarked for representational activity, allegedly the NEA’s top priority, while it spent $66 million on political activities.
Then, NEA honcho Becky Pringle visited an elementary school in Chicago in early September and, with no sense of irony, insisted that the insidious creep of politics into our schools is a threat to education. “All of the politicians and pundits who are trying to politicize our school (sic), demonize teachers, which is new, who are not focused on what our kids need or what our parents say they want for their kids,” she said.
Shortly after the NEA convention, the nation’s other national teachers union, the American Federation of Teachers, held their annual wingding in D.C., and its theme paralleled the NEA’s. The titles of the various sessions tell you all you need to know: “Affirming LGBTQIA+ Identities in and out of the Classroom,” “Education for Liberation: The Role of the Racially Conscious Educator in Combating Oppression,” and “Strategies for Integrating Climate Change into Your Teaching.”
Shortly after their convention, the AFT hypocritically launched an ad buy that insisted schools need “real solutions over politics.” The union’s press release includes a quote from its president, Randi Weingarten, who maintains, “Now more than ever, our students need solutions, not smears from extremists trying to inject their political agenda into our classrooms. As I travel the country and speak to educators and parents, it’s clear that we all want the same thing: for our kids to be OK. And most of us agree that the best way to do that isn’t through banning books, demonizing teachers or censoring curriculum, it’s by investing in our public schools and seeding, sustaining and scaling the strategies and programs we know work.”
Here, Weingarten is living up to her reputation as an arsonist pretending to be a firefighter.
But it gets worse.
