For decades it has been clear that the teachers’ unions have been a disaster for America’s public schools.
Despite being at the very top of the charts in spending per student in the world (#2 after tiny Lichtenstein), the United States does rather badly on educational performance compared to our peer countries. There are a lot of explanations and excuses, but the simple fact is that the educational bureaucracy–including government officials in addition to the teachers’ unions–seems utterly indifferent to the fact that they are failing students.
The system serves itself well, and it’s not exactly students who are paying the bills, right? There is an iron triangle of the Democrat Party, the education bureaucrats, and the teachers’ unions that support each other and keep the gravy train flowing.
That’s not to say that many teachers aren’t doing their best in a broken system; most people go into teaching with the best of intentions. But they are like conscientious workers in a socialist system, doomed to expend a lot of effort in order to achieve the smallest of gains.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, has been the target of a lot of well-deserved criticism, but the National Education Association is actually the larger of the two teachers’ unions and is just as destructive. And, if it is at all possible, the NEA is even more cult-like than the AFT.
Witness the closing speech of the NEA’s President at their annual convention. It is something to behold. Pure religious/revolutionary fervor.
Becky Pringle, President of the NEA who oversaw one of the most egregious and child-harming tenures of that body, just gave a speech. Short version: when you have no religion – your politics becomes your faith and the results are not pretty.pic.twitter.com/0sSkAVfjQa
— Justin Hart (@justin_hart) July 14, 2023
There is so much crazy here, and this is just a clip from the execrable self-aggrandizing speech.
First of all, the NEA is a union that is supposed to represent the interests of its members, and if Becky Pringle is right, the interests of its members are not teaching kids how to read and write, but transforming society from its present form into something unrecognizable.
I am pretty sure this isn’t what most parents want their tax dollars spent on, especially when test scores are cratering, kids are becoming increasingly mentally ill, and millions of kids have disappeared from the educational system.
Pringle is giving a religiopolitical speech, having little to do with the traditional pay/benefits/working condition issues a union usually focuses on. You can see that in their discourse, their priorities, and how the union deploys its resources.
Public employee unions should not, in principle, exist. Public employees work for the public, and the public’s servants shouldn’t organize against the public. FDR made this point, and he wasn’t exactly a reactionary.
But the NEA doesn’t like the public. It sees itself in opposition to us, and that the role of the public education system is to transform society into a new social justice state based upon their vision.
The NEA, as with so much of the Left, is a cult. A pseudo-religious movement with political aims.
It’s time to scrap the public education system and begin again. Nuke the site from orbit; it’s the only way to be sure.
Read the full article here