It’s time once again for our yearly review of the National Education Association’s annual edition of “Today’s Education,” a 166-page yearbook documenting the NEA’s radical agenda. The NEA’s $97.5 million budget for the coming year will be used to advance these specific goals and objectives.
A significant addition to the usual radical agenda is the establishment of a gestapo-like clearinghouse and communications network to identify opponents of the NEA and to provide dossiers on them to local NEA members.
“The NEA will provide information to state and local affiliates regarding anti-NEA individuals and organizations. Such information will include at least: (a) their specific anti-NEA positions and the NEA response, (b) background information on each individual, and (c) any known scheduled appearance in the area of local affiliates.” (p.142)
The NEA also will “prepare a booklet to assist local association leaders in dealing with harassment” including a “model action plan to combat such harassment.” (p.142)
The NEA stridently asserts that “teachers and librarians must have the right to select instructional/library materials without censorship or legislative interference.” (p.156) That means they want the right to spend the taxpayers’ money without supervision by taxpayers, citizens, or parents.
Testing our children’s teachers is strictly taboo. “Competency testing must not be used as a condition of employment, recertification or relicensing, evaluation or promotion of certified teachers.” (p.154)
The NEA opposes “tuition tax credits” (p.139) and even the selling or leasing of “closed public school buildings” to private schools. (p.147) However, the NEA wants “child care programs which are coordinated with the public school system.” (p.140)
The NEA wants children in school by age five and seeks “legislation to ensure that early childhood developmental programs offered primarily through the public schools be fully funded and culminate in mandatory kindergarten.” (p.148)
Concerning “Family Life Education” (translation: sex education), the NEA supports programs “including information on birth control and family planning, parenting skills, prenatal care, sexually transmitted diseases, incest and sexual abuse.” The NEA asserts “the right of every individual [including children] to live in an environment of freely available information, knowledge, and wisdom about sexuality.” (p.150)
The NEA actively encourages state affiliates to conduct comparable worth projects and promises that “consideration for major NEA funding will be given to those projects that NEA determines will have national impact.” (p.142) Says the NEA, “the ‘market value’ means of establishing pay cannot be the final determinant of pay scales.” (p.157)
The Association supports “reproductive freedom” and “affirmative action,” (p.138) as well as “equal opportunity and responsibility for women and men in military service” (translation: drafting women into military combat). (p.140) The NEA defines “civil rights” to include “sexual orientation” (a euphemism for “gay rights”). (p.163)
As for any hope of balance or objectivity in the classroom, the NEA opposes “regulations that mandate the teaching of so-called ‘creation science,'” and “urges its affiliates to seek repeal of such mandates where they exist.” (p.156)
The NEA urges a “freeze on the testing, development, production, upgrading, emplacement and deployment of nuclear weapons.” The union urges the use of classroom courses on nuclear war which “show the effects of nuclear weaponry and demonstrate strategies for disarmament …” (p.165)
“The NEA urges that the United States make every effort to strengthen the United Nations to make it a more effective instrument for world peace.” (p.164) “The NEA urges the U.S. Government to refrain from any U.S. plan for covert or overt action that would destabilize Nicaragua.” (p.144)
Concerning a balanced budget, “the NEA opposes any constitutional amendment respecting tax limitations or the federal budget” and supports the “repeal of tax indexing.” (p.139) Funny thing, though, there is no mention of doubling the personal exemption to $2,000 — the most pro-child provision in the current tax reform package. (p.142)
No wonder polls show that most NEA members do not agree with these objectives.
