The National Education Association doesn't represent the best interests of students; it doesn't even represent the teachers that make up its membership!
The National Education Association, or NEA, is "one of the nation's largest and most powerful unions," observe Perry Glanzer and Travis Pardo of Focus on the Family. "It enrolls more than half the public school teachers in the United States in its membership; and, through the help of collective bargaining laws, membership fees, and agency fees from non-member teachers, it receives over $865 million in estimated annual revenues from teachers."
Glanzer and Pardo contend that "the NEA's one-sided political involvement fails to represent the diverse views within its membership." That failure is most glaring on four particular issues: abortion, homosexuality, school choice, and religious expression. (The resolutions adopted by the NEA at its 1998 summer convention, on these and other topics, are excerpted in the August issue of Eagle Forum's Education Reporter.)
"The NEA not only supports the right of women to choose an abortion; it also 'urges the government to give high priority to making available all methods of family planning to women and men unable to take advantage of private facilities,'" Glanzer and Pardo report. "For those teachers with pro-life views . . . the NEA's agenda is morally reprehensible." Also reprehensible to many teachers is the union's support for sex education that promotes homosexual practices.
The union crusades for toleration of feticide and perversion, but remains rigidly closed-minded when it comes to parental choice in education. Glanzer and Pardo note that the NEA opposes "four specific educational options that place more educational power and responsibility in parents' hands: home schooling, parental option plans, vouchers, and tax credits."
Noting the union's condemnation of so-called "extremist groups," Glanzer and Pardo point out that the NEA applies this highly charged label to "groups or parents with a conservative religious affiliation who criticize the public schools for one reason or another. State affiliates of the NEA have held seminars on how to deal with critics from what it calls 'the radical right,' 'the extreme right,' or 'fundamentalists,'" Glanzer and Pardo relate. "According to their literature, the 'extremists' or 'censors' are 'very frequently members of an ultra-conservative, fundamentalist, charismatic or Pentecostal faith." Teachers who fall into this same category might want to reconsider their NEA membership.
Why not get a piece of paper and a pen right now and draft a letter of resignation? Tell the union officials how deeply offended you are by their promotion of practices that are individually and socially destructive. Tell them how much you resent the union's use of your dues to support candidates and legislation you personally oppose. Let them know that their radical agenda violates your religious and moral beliefs. Assert your right as a nonmember to be free of all fees not directly associated with bargaining, and to have any such fees already paid refunded to you. Sign the letter and mail it today. Then encourage all your colleagues who share your feelings to do the same.
