The National Education Association’s (NEA) annual conference is underway, and the teachers union is voting on calling for a national policy of mandatory masking, creating an enemies list, and rejecting the words “mother” and “father.”
The Chicago conference is chock-full of woke agenda items and progressive language involving issues that would seem to have little to do with the proper education of the nation’s children. The unabashedly leftist organization doesn’t even seem to recognize its own heterosexual male membership, at least according to one measure in circulation.
“NEA is a social justice union that is a majority female and trans and gender non-confirming folx,” one New Business Initiative (NBI) says, calling to “publicly stand in defense of abortion” and calling abortion limits an attack on “students, families, and communities.”
Another calls for “a national policy of mandatory masking and COVID vaccines in schools, as well as high-quality virtual education for immuno-compromised students and all families who want it.”
A third says the NEA will publicize its commitment to “young people’s right to learn about and develop their own sexual orientation and gender identity.”
A fourth promotes language that is “LGBTQIA+ inclusive,” including using “birthing parent” and “non-birthing parent” instead of mother and father.
One initiative calls for spending $140,000 on opposition research about the “largest 25 organizations that are actively working to diminish a students’ [sic] right to honesty in education, freedom of sexual identify [sic], and teacher autonomy.”
NBIs are proposals that must be voted on by delegates in order to pass. NEA has previously been radical in what it passes. In 2019, it voted down a motion to “rededicate itself to the pursuit of increased student learning.” It voted in favor, meanwhile, of “discussions around support for reparations” and incorporating “the concept of ‘White Fragility’ into NEA trainings.”
Each year’s NBIs had previously been public on the NEA’s website, it but abruptly yanked last year’s offline after parents noticed that it has voted to approve a resolution to “oppose attempts to ban critical race theory” and to provide a study that “critiques . . . capitalism . . . and other forms of power and oppression.” That contradicted teachers’ claim that CRT is not taught in schools.
This year’s NBIs were uncovered by Terry Stoops, a conservative education expert in North Carolina.
NBI 37 calls for nationwide mandatory masking and COVID vaccines #NEARA #neara2022 #neara22 #NEA 3/14 pic.twitter.com/amN97etWtY
— Terry Stoops (@TerryStoops) July 5, 2022
The NEA did not return a request for comment on why the NBIs are no longer public, and on the results of any voting.
The NEA has previously promoted Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals,” highlighting his passage “If you have a vast organization, parade it before the enemy, openly show your power.”
The NEA is the largest labor group in the U.S., with more than three million members, including first lady Jill Biden. Its president is Becky Pringle.
As test scores have plummeted following teachers-union-demanded school shutdowns, the NEA urges placing less emphasis on test results that measure whether students are learning. An NEA “Policy Playbook” released just before the 2020 election says that “the over-emphasis on standardized testing has caused considerable collateral damage,” and focuses instead on “racial and social justice.”
Source: Dailywire
