President Bill Clinton’s earliest and most steadfast supporters, the members of the National Education Association (NEA), met in Orlando over the Fourth of July to pass their usual list of radical resolutions. Unlike Party platforms, which are often consigned to the circular file or even repudiated by the candidates, NEA resolutions spell out the lobbying orders for the well-paid NEA staff.
To no one’s surprise, the NEA passed strong resolutions demanding that federal funding for public schools be “substantially increased” and that all proposals for tuition tax credits or vouchers be vehemently opposed. The NEA is so vindictively against private schools that one resolution even opposes ever renting or selling a closed public school building to a private school.
The NEA’s hostility to nonpublic education is also manifest in its demand that parents be licensed in order to homeschool and be permitted to use only curricula approved by the state. And, when their convention headliner, Hillary Clinton, included a kind word for charter schools in her speech, she was greeted by stony silence.
Many of the NEA resolutions are written in a jargon that obscures their real purpose. Let’s give a glossary of what some of these terms really mean.
The NEA resolved bitterly against “censorship” and against “extremist groups.” To the NEA, “censorship” means any parental criticism of public school curricula, and “extremists” are all those who oppose the NEA agenda.
NEA resolutions support public school sex education that is “sequential, pre-K through 12” (i.e., for 14 years) and “comprehensive” (i.e., covering all types of sex including “diversity of sexual orientation” and “universal precautions,” i.e., demonstrations of devices and explicit descriptions of all sex practices that do not result in a live baby). This means teaching sex ed without regard for moral principles, children’s natural modesty about sex, the child’s latency period, or parental wishes.
NEA resolutions endorse school-based clinics available to “every” child (i.e., without exception) on a “confidential” basis (i.e., without parental knowledge). The NEA wants these school clinics to provide “services” (i.e., diagnosis, “intervention,” and treatment), “birth control” (with demonstrations), and “referrals” (i.e., to abortion clinics).
The NEA resolutions strongly endorse an abundance of counseling and “psychological programs” in the public schools. School counseling means psychological testing and treatment by non-licensed psychologists, all “confidential” (i.e., without parental consent).
NEA resolutions repeatedly affirm that some courses and concepts must be “integrated” into, or made “an integral part” of, classroom teaching. This integration doesn’t have anything to do with race; it means concealing controversial counseling and teaching (such as instruction in “safe-sex” devices, AIDS education, and suicide education) within various courses so parents can’t discover it, object to it, or remove their children from it.
The terms “sexual orientation” and “diversity,” which is a code word for the same thing, are used in more than a dozen resolutions. They make it clear that the NEA endorses teaching the gay/lesbian agenda in curricula, textbooks, activities, training programs, and classroom presentations of role models.
The NEA endorses affirmative action, which means preferential hiring of designated minorities. Gays and lesbians are one of the NEA’s most favored minorities.
The NEA endorses “early childhood education,” i.e., giving the public schools control over “all” children “from birth through age eight.” The NEA supports bilingual education, i.e., keeping immigrant children speaking their native language instead of learning English.
Despite the many thousands of NEA members who are pro-life, an NEA resolution endorses “reproductive freedom.” This resolution empowers the NEA lobbying staff to pressure Congress for legislation that uses taxpayers’ money to finance abortions.
NEA resolutions endorse all the feminist follies, including Comparable Worth. This concept, which has been rejected by every legislature and court that has considered it, is the radical feminists’ demand for government wage control based on a subjective system that would raise the pay of women but freeze the pay of men.
Global education is a favorite of the NEA. This means teaching that patriotism and sovereignty are bad while global governance is good, that Americans should subordinate their customs and country to foreign control, and that we should distribute U.S. wealth and resources to the rest of the world.
The NEA urges schools to teach multiculturalism, i.e., teaching that every other culture is superior to Western Judeo-Christian civilization. The NEA endorses self-esteem, i.e., teaching students to feel they are A-OK even when they don’t learn anything.
The NEA resolutions demand that Congress pass a single-payer health plan. That is a call for renewed lobbying for Clinton’s socialized health proposal that Americans rejected in 1994.
NEA resolutions urge their members to become “politically involved.” Look out! That’s a directive to all teachers to use their position and free time to work for NEA candidates and legislative goals.
