The nation’s largest teachers union, the National Education Association, attracted 9,000 delegates to its annual convention in Washington, D.C., over the Fourth of July weekend. Delegates sported buttons with provocative slogans such as “Gay marriage causes Global Warming only because we are so hot!,” “Hate is not a family value,” “The ‘Christian Right’ is neither” and “Gay Rights are civil rights.”

The delegates passed dozens of hard-hitting resolutions that now become the NEA’s official policy. The resolutions authorize NEA members and employees to lobby for those goals in the halls of Congress and state capitols.

NEA resolutions cover the waterfront of all sorts of political issues that have nothing to do with improving education for schoolchildren, such as supporting statehood for the District of Columbia, a “single-payer health care plan” (i.e., government-run), gun control, ratification of the International Criminal Court Treaty, and taking steps “to change activities that contribute to global climate change.”

The NEA fiercely opposes any competition for public schools, such as vouchers, tuition tax credits, parental option plans or public support of any kind to non-public schools. The NEA strongly opposes designating English as our official language even though such a designation is supported by more than 80 percent of Americans.

The NEA opposes homeschooling unless children are taught by state-licensed teachers using a state-approved curriculum. The NEA wants to bar homeschooled students from participating in any extracurricular activities in public schools even though their parents pay school taxes.

Labels: Education, Social Observation, Theater of the Absurd