(The Truth About) The National Education Association

by Dennis L. Cuddy, Ph.D. - NewsWithViews

posted 01/14/08

The National Education Association (NEA) is perhaps the most powerful labor union in the nation, but it is rarely investigated by the major news media. Both Bill and Hillary Clinton have attended the NEA's annual convention and expressed their appreciation for the union's political support.

At the NEA's July 1993 convention, President Clinton stated: "I believe that the president of this organization (NEA) would say we have had the partnership I promised in the campaign of 1992, and we will continue to have it.... You and I are joined in a common cause, and I believe we will succeed."

A few months later, on December 15, 1993, EDUCATION WEEK reported that "Debra DeLee, the former director of governmental relations for the NEA, has joined the Democratic National Committee as its executive director." A clear majority of the public school teachers in the nation belong to the NEA. Yet probably very few have known what their own union has stood for throughout the years of the 20th century. The following is a chronology of just a few of the revealing activities and published statements of the NEA during that time:

• October 19, 1929---The NEA presents John Dewey ("Father of Progressive Education") with a "Life Membership." This is the same year Dewey published INDIVIDUALISM, OLD AND NEW, in which he proclaimed "We are in for some kind of socialism." And it is the year after Dewey in the December 5, 1928 NEW REPUBLIC praised the Soviet Bolsheviks' "marvelous development of progressive educational ideas and practices" and their counteracting "the influence of home and Church."
• 1932---The NEA makes Dewey honorary president of its organization, and its Department of Superintendence division publishes its tenth yearbook subtitled CHARACTER EDUCATION. In this yearbook, it criticizes the church for employing "outworn dogmas of the past" and states that "relativity must replace absolutism in the realm of morals" and that "the citizen of the future must be a citizen of the world."
• July 1934---At the 72nd annual meeting of the NEA, Willard Givens (who will be executive secretary of the NEA from 1935 to 1952) says: "A dying laissez-faire must be completely destroyed and all of us, including the 'owners,' must be subjected to a large degree of social control.... An equitable distribution of income will be sought."
• January 1946---NEA JOURNAL publishes "The Teacher and World Government" by Joy Elmer Morgan (editor of NEA JOURNAL from 1921 to 1955), in which he proclaims: "In the struggle to establish an adequate world government, the teacher...can do much to prepare the hearts and minds of children for global understanding and cooperation.... At the very top of the agencies which will assure the coming of world government must stand the school, the teacher, and the organized profession."
• October 1947---NEA JOURNAL publishes "On the Waging of Peace" by NEA official William Carr, who advocates that teachers "teach those attitudes that will result ultimately in the creation of a world citizenship and world government."
• November 23, 1956---former teacher, communist, and organizer of the New York Teachers' Union, Dr. Bella Dodd, states in an interview in the Los Angeles TIDINGS: "I learned that the function of the Communist Party was to be the lead donkey pulling the drift of American life to the left. Most of the programs we advocated, the National Education Association followed the next year or so."
• 1962---ISSUES IN (HUMAN RELATIONS) TRAINING is published by the National Training Laboratories of the NEA, and in this book the editors write that human relations or sensitivity training "fits into a context of institutional influence procedures which includes coercive persuasion in the form of thought reform or brainwashing...."
• September 23, 1968---NEA president Elizabeth Koontz addresses the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education and states: "The NEA has a multi-faceted program already directed toward the urban school problem, embracing every phase, from the Headstart Program to sensitivity training for adults--both teachers and parents." Remember the reference immediately above concerning "sensitivity training" and "brainwashing."
• 1971---SCHOOLS FOR THE '70s AND BEYOND: A CALL TO ACTION is published by the NEA, and declares that "...teachers who conform to the traditional institutional mode are out of place. They might find fulfillment as tap-dance instructors, or guards in maximum security prisons, or proprietors of reducing salons, or agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation--but they damage teaching children, and themselves by staying in the classroom."
• February 10, 1973---In the SATURDAY REVIEW OF EDUCATION, NEA president Catherine Barrett pronounces: "Dramatic changes in the way we will raise our children in the year 2000 are indicated, particularly in terms of schooling.... We will need to recognize that the so-called 'basic skills,' which currently represent yearly the total effort in elementary schools, will be taught in one-quarter of the present school day.... When this happens--and it's near--the teacher can rise to his true calling. More than a dispenser of information, the teacher will be a conveyor of values, a philosopher.... We will be agents of change."
• Advertisement February 1979---The NEA holds its 17th annual Conference on Human and Civil Rights in Washington, DC, and the keynote speaker is New Ager Jean Houston. She states that many teachers have opened "the minds of children from darkness to illuminist humanity.... The moral mandates,...the standard brand governments, religions...are breaking down.... The New Age is seeded and created.... And who is it done by? I suggest largely by educators...."
• February 1980 - June 1984 ---John Lloyd is executive director of the Kansas National Education Association (an NEA affiliate). He says that Saul Alinsky's RULES FOR RADICALS is the NEA's "bible." In the book, Alinsky has an "acknowledgment" to Lucifer, and further states that the radical organizer "dedicated to changing the life of a particular community must first rub raw the resentments of the people of the community; fan the latent hostilities of many to the point of overt expression. He must search out controversy and issues.... An organizer must stir up dissatisfaction and discontent.... He knows that all values are relative.... Truth to him is relative and changing."
• April 5, 1983---THE WASHINGTON POST editorial, "Political Teaching," accuses the NEA of preparing curriculum materials on nuclear weapons, atomic war, and the American arms build-up, which are "political indoctrination." The NEA curriculum is called "Choices: A Unit on Conflict and Nuclear War."
• March 1991---NEA TODAY publishes an interview conducted by NEA staffer Stephanie Weiss with Planned Parenthood president Faye Wattleton, in which the latter expresses her support for school-based distribution of contraceptives and "comprehensive sexuality education" which would begin "well before... kindergarten age."
• 1994---DICTATORSHIP OF VIRTUE: MULTICULTURALISM AND THE BATTLE FOR AMERICA'S FUTURE by NEW YORK TIMES reporter Richard Bernstein is published. In this book he writes that as long ago as 1973 the NEA proclaimed that "all whites are racists," and in 1991 NEA TODAY declared that "never again will Christopher Columbus sit on a pedestal in United States history. Christopher Columbus brought slavery to the hemisphere."
• July 1997---Kansas Education Watch Networks "Update" states that the following are actual excerpts from a transcript of an audio cassette tape used to train NEA labor negotiators in the Midwest: "In order to apply pressure tactics properly, your negotiating team needs to know and understand your board and its negotiating team thoroughly. Uncovering information about the board, the superintendent and the board negotiating team, are critical to your success in negotiations.... The suggested data to be gathered on board members is the following: ...religious affiliation. His estimated income....and don't forget to check into his politics....wear down the board physically and psychologically...."
• January 5, 1999---INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY publishes "The NEA's Political Lesson Plan" by staff writer Michael Chapman, in which he explains: "The nation's largest teachers union wants the U.S. to nationalize health care, start a nuclear freeze, adopt national energy policies and pass more gun-control laws. Yet it doesn't want teachers tested or schools privatized.... The NEA has long backed a left-wing political agenda."

Many more revealing facts about and quotes by the NEA can be found in my NEA: GRAB FOR POWER. Since the beginning of the 21st century, the NEA has continued its radical leftist agenda, as the following are excerpts from the NEA's July 2007 ADVANCING NEA's LEGISLATIVE PROGRAM: "NEA supports:

1. repeal of the so-called right-to-work provision of federal labor law
2. a tax-supported, single-payer health care plan for all residents of the United States
3. the addition of the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution
4. reproductive freedom without governmental intervention
5. comprehensive immigration reform that rejects the criminalization of undocumented immigrants and includes a path to permanent residency, citizenship, or asylum.

NEA opposes:

1. the use of vouchers or certificates in education
2. federally mandated parental option or 'choice' programs
3. the testing of teachers as a criterion for job retention, promotion, tenure, or salary increments
4. any constitutional amendment imposing limitations on taxes or the federal budget."

© 2008 Dennis Cuddy - All Rights Reserved