Posted on 08/20/2007 9:42:57 AM PDT by Delacon
Some critics complain that the issue of education has been conspicuously absent from presidential television debates. But Democratic presidential candidates did sound off with their pro-federal government, pro-spending policies at the annual convention of the National Education Association, and the nation's largest teachers union liked what they heard.
U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., told delegates that she will fight school vouchers "with every breath in my body." Reiterating the message of her book "It Takes a Village," she called for universal preschool for 4-year-olds.
Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., likewise inveighed against "passing out vouchers." Former Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., also announced his opposition to vouchers and proposed that the federal government pay college tuition for all students who will work 10 hours a week.
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson wants to "raise teacher's average minimum wage to $40,000 a year." Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, goes all out for "a universal prekindergarten system that will provide year-round day care for children age 3 to 5."
All Democratic candidates look forward to increased federal control of and spending for public schools. And they all attacked President George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind law for not appropriating more funds to implement it.
After cheering the promises made by the candidates, NEA delegates buckled down to the serious business of spelling out their political goals, many of which have nothing whatever to do with giving schoolchildren a better education.
The NEA demands a tax-supported, single-payer, health care plan for all residents, a word artfully chosen to include illegal immigrants. The NEA supports immigration "reform" that "includes (note: this is a change from last year's verb "may include") a path to permanent residency, citizenship, or asylum" for illegal immigrants.
For many years, and again this year, the NEA urged a national holiday honoring Cesar Chavez. The NEA must have forgotten that Chavez, a strident advocate for farmworkers, vehemently opposed illegal immigration because he knew it depressed the wages of U.S. citizens and legal immigrants.
The NEA supports a beefed-up federal hate crimes law with heavier penalties. The NEA wants federal legislation to confer special rights on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity and expression.
The NEA passed at least a dozen resolutions supporting the "gay rights agenda" in public schools. These cover employment, curricula, textbooks, resource and instructional materials, school activities, role models, and language, with frequent use of terms such as sexual orientation, gender identification, and homophobia.
The NEA enthusiastically supports all the goals of radical feminism, including abortion, the Equal Rights Amendment, school-based health clinics, wage control so the government can arbitrarily raise the pay of women but not men, the feminist pork called the Women's Educational Equity Act, and letting feminists rewrite textbooks to conform to feminist ideology.
The NEA supports statehood for the District of Columbia. The NEA supports affirmative action. The NEA calls for repeal of right-to-work laws, which allow teachers in some states to decline joining the NEA.
The NEA supports United Nations treaties, especially the U.N. Convention on Women, the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the International Court of Justice. The NEA loves global education, which promotes world citizenship and taxing U.S. citizens to give away their wealth to other countries.
Another NEA favorite is environmental education, which teaches that human activity is generally harmful to the environment and population should be reduced.
Here are some things the NEA opposes: vouchers, tuition tax credits, parental choice programs, making English the official language of the U.S., the use of voter identification for elections, and the privatization of Social Security.
High on the list of NEA policies that actually relate to education is opposition to the testing of teachers as a criterion for job retention, promotion, tenure, or salary.
The NEA reiterated its support for pre-kindergarten for "all 3- and 4-year-old children," mandatory full-day kindergarten, and "early childhood education programs in the public schools for children from birth through age 8." The NEA demands that this "early" education have "diversity-based curricula" and "bias-free screening devices."
The NEA wants the right to teach schoolchildren about sex without any interference from parents, but on the other hand wants its pals in the bureaucracy to regulate all home-schooling taught by parents. The NEA opposes allowing home-schoolers to participate in public school sports or extracurricular activities.
Two of the NEA's favorite words in its resolutions and policies are "diversity," which means teaching that gay behavior is OK, and "multiculturalism," which means stressing negative things about the United States and positive things about non-Christian cultures.
The exorbitant dues teachers pay to the NEA enable its well-paid staff to lobby Congress and state legislatures on behalf of all these goals.
So this is the union that supposedly represents me. *sigh* Antonio Gramsci would be proud.
This one is absolutely another reason to homeschool. Got to keep kids away from predators and thugs like these.
I know I have 5 in my family and they are stupid on this subject.
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They are likely just stupid. ( low IQ)
The abysmally low average SAT scores of teachers is proof enough.
Go eat dirt, socialists.
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The correct words are: Communist, Marxist, and Useful Idiot.
bunch of socialists
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The correct words are: Communists, Marxists, and Useful Idiots.
We will not win this civil war of ideas unless we start using the words that fit.
10 thousand dollars per student.
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It is FAR more than that. Not included in school budgets are the health and pension of retired teachers, or all of the MANY state services that government schools use that private schools have not access to.
One more comment¨:
Rush, Sean, and the other leading radio talk hosts will be silent on this issue.
Government schools are the biggest threat to our nation´s survival than any other single issue that our nation can or will face.
We could even survive a nuclear bomb by the Muslims, but we can NOT survive the continuous and unrelenting, hate America, Marxist indoctrination that our children are receiving every day.
It is THAT serious, and the American public is asleep.
And the GOP controlling everything else important-as long as the GOP at every level is truly conservative again and for always! The GOP at every level truly needs to become the “conservative” political party again and for always!
Defund the NEA!
If you work in public schools, be sure your money is not taken out of your check for NEA.
Send it somewhere (anywhere) else.
I understand there is another teacher support group that is not liberal.
Don’t know the name, however.
I don’t know how to top post or anything but we’re involved in a serious issue here in our school district concerning the That’s A Family video. The vote is on August 30th (BOE, after many months of a committee led by the same people who included this in the curriculum for 3rd graders).
My grade school children attend Catholic grade school so it doesn’t directly affect them. My two teens attend public high school and this video doesn’t directly affect them either.
I just learned that a judge in MA ruled against parents opting out of sex ed for their grade school children. I firmly believe this will happen in NJ eventually.
I taught/currently sub in public schools. The NEA, as well as the dems/libs wil do anything they can to stop any vouchers because it costs them gov’t money. It also gives parents a choice and they can’t have that.
Most teachers have very little idea where their union dues go. I know. I was once one of those. However, even if one opts to not join the union, we still have to pay about 80% of the dues. And even then one is “blacklisted.” The school unions are huge and powerful.
There’s a movement, a small one but it’s gaining support, of teachers protesting this - once they learned their union dues were primarily supporting abortion and such.
I don’t know what it’s like in most states, but in PA and NJ, it’s almost impossible to NOT join the Union.
Freep-mail me to get on or off my pro-life and Catholic Ping List:
Please ping me to all note-worthy Pro-Life or Catholic threads, or other threads of interest.
Unfortunately, she’s right in some of those statements. #2 and #4. She left how she’d be hounded and ostracized if she didn’t join. Talk about thug mentality. It exists.
This is one of the reasons why teachers will never be considered ‘professionals” imo. The Union has done way more harm than good to the profression.
Some can’t pull their kids out.
I know I couldn’t teach my own kids and give kudos to those who do. And I’m a teacher, lol. Mine attend Catholic grade school but in our parish, we have at least 11 kids leaving my 6th graders class to attend the public middle school and we’re not getting those who are disgusted with the public schools/homo agenda.
Many are disgusted with the high increases in tuition, we are but we’re still there for now, and many are disgusted that the catholic school is too liberal. It’s still better than the public schools, and we live in an area with excellent public schools.
She could conceivably stop breathing, and I’d be cool with that...
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Hm?....Is anyone holding a gun to the heads of these teachers and ··forcing·· them to work for the government schools?
I don´t think so.
My conclusion:
If a teacher is working for the system, they are part of the system, and entirely responsible for propping up, and breathing life into the government school monster.
The NEA reiterated its support for.... "early childhood education programs in the public schools for children from birth through age 8."
From birth! I can picture Hillary and the others eventually agreeing to that, too. It's only a matter of time...
The kid told his mother (a very different story from what really happened), the mother complained to the principal (who promptly suspended him) and then she pressed charges with the police. At the trial, there was so little evidence against him, that the judge tossed the case out before it even went to the defense. It doesn't matter, though. My friend's 14 year teaching career is gone.
And what did the union(NEA) do for one their teachers through all this? Absolutely nothing. He became a bargaining chip in the negotiations for a new teachers' contract. The union got some concessions in their contract negotiation in exchange for tossing my friend overboard.
This is what he got in return for paying 14 years of union dues.
Here's the latest on his story.
Bad link. Let me try again.
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