What teachers unions want

People who have not examined the issue may believe that unions exist to promote the best interests of their members. Most of the time, however, the unions promote their own interests and radical political causes at the expense of their own members.

For example, consider the political activities of the National Education Association (NEA). The NEA has passed many resolutions having nothing to do with collective bargaining. The following information comes from the August 2005 Phyllis Schlafly Report.

------------

The summer 2005 NEA convention passed resolutions on the following subjects having nothing to do with education:

Support for a "proposal calling on the NEA to "develop a comprehensive strategy" to deal with the attacks on gay curricula, policies and practices by what the NEA calls "extremist groups" (that's the NEA's term for parents). A delegate who asked for respect for ex-gays was loudly booed, while the delegates cheered the speaker who pronounced that there is no such person as an ex-gay."

a call to boycott Wal-Mart

support for statehood for the District of Columbia

support for affirmative action

opposition to private accounts in Social Security

opposition to capital punishment

support for gun control

support for "single-payer health care" (i.e., government medicine)

endorsement of the International Criminal Court and the UN Declaration on Human Rights

NEA resolutions pertaining to education called for the teaching of global, multicultural, suicide, environmental, and bilingual education.

NEA resolutions endorsed all feminist goals:

abortion

Comparable Worth

the Equal Rights Amendment

taking over the baby-sitting of children "from birth through age eight"

The gay lobby's influence extends even over infants, whom the NEA wants to provide with "diversity-based curricula" and "bias-free screening devices."

The NEA continues to call for mandatory kindergarten with compulsory attendance.

The NEA resolutions demand that the public schools assume a bigger role in providing sex instruction, with teachers protected from any interference by parents.

The NEA asserts that it is the right of every child to have freely available information about sex, birth control, diversity of sexual orientation, sexually transmitted diseases, incest, and homophobia.

The NEA delegates want to ban homeschooling (unless parents are government-approved teachers).

The NEA also demanded that the homeschool curriculum be approved by the state department of education.

The NEA resolved that "homeschooled students should not participate in any extracurricular activities in the public schools."

------------

It is clear that the NEA is a radical left-wing organization. Of course, the NEA and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) are not the same organization. However, the fact that they have similar political agendas can be inferred from the fact that the leaderships of the two unions tried to merge a few years back. (The merger was approved by AFT members but shot down by NEA members, apparently thanks to turf battles.) The millions of Americans who have been forced to join teachers unions are being used to force liberalism on America.