Is the NEA forfeiting classroom excellence for its own political agenda?
It was supposed to be just another question-and-answer period with just another special interest group. And so as the congressional candidate returned from this hundredth “give and take,” his staff members at campaign headquarters hardly noticed—that is, until Tom began shaking his head and repeating the frustrated refrain of “boy oh boy.”
I looked up (as would any good press secretary) and asked the obvious, “What’s wrong?”
“Those teachers!” he said incredulously, reviewing first in his own mind, and then with me, the interrogation of the night.
He had been seated in a chair facing a semicircle of 10 or 12 other chairs, in which sat his questioners—members of the Illinois Education Association, the statewide clone of the larger National Education Association (NEA). The arrangement worked for both intimacy and intimidation. After the usual amenities, the political inquisition began.
“Where do you stand on abortion?” asked the first questioner. Tom, seeking the Republican congressional nomination in his district, was an outspoken proponent of life and responded with his unabashedly prolife logic. It was the first of an evening of “wrong answers.”
As the questioning progressed, it became readily apparent to Tom that the real concerns of his questioners were more social and political than educational. And with that realization, and the distinct sense that he was the proverbial sheep among some very hungry wolves, he challenged the group’s sense of political pluralism, begged their apologies, and returned to friendlier territory.
Teacher Power
I later learned that Tom’s experience was probably more the rule than the exception. And that what he had participated in is repeated across the United States by local and statewide affiliates of what many observers call the strongest lobby and special interest group in American politics today: the 1.7 million-member National Education Association.
Organized in 1857 “to elevate the character and advance the interests of the profession of teaching, and to promote the cause of public education in the United States,” the NEA, whose membership includes four out of every five public school teachers in the country, has long since added extracurricular political activities to its school-house agenda. “We feel we have a professional responsibility, as well as a responsibility as citizens, to make sure that those candidates seeking office deal with education,” NEA president Mary Futrell told CHRISTIANITY TODAY in an exclusive interview. “And we feel an obligation to work for those candidates as well.”
And work they do. Their first presidential endorsement resulted, they say, in the election of Jimmy Carter in 1976. Their victory percentage in congressional races since 1972 is truly impressive, union hype notwithstanding. In 1984 alone, NEA-endorsed congressional candidates won 237 out of the 330 races in which the association was directly involved.
Complementing the work of these ready-made election “foot soldiers” are the ongoing NEA lobbying efforts. The association has legislative “contact teams” in every congressional district, quickly reachable through a network of 14,000 local affiliates. Lawmakers tend to listen to these lobbying teams because they are the very same committees that, every two years, interview candidates like Tom for the union’s endorsements and campaign contributions.
According to the Congressional Quarterly,NEA lobbying efforts have prevented the Reagan administration from cutting federal aid to education as sharply as it wanted and dismantling the NEA’s highly prized Department of Education. Moreover, NEA lobbyists helped make the proposed tuition tax credits for parents of private school students an issue too hot for many in Congress to touch—at least during an election year.
Instruction Or Indoctrination?
But NEA’s political muscle has not been flexed in educational areas alone. Indeed, it has made its presence felt in a number of decidedly noneducational, or marginally educational, issues. The implications of this expanding involvement make the NEA something other than the usual single-issue special interest group and, therefore, of unusual concern to liberals and conservatives alike. Writes Chester Finn, a professor of education and public policy at Vanderbilt University: “It [NEA] becomes infinitely more consequential when we consider that their members also wield what is left of the moral power and intellectual authority that virtually all the world’s civilizations have ceded to those in whose trust they place the education of the young.”
Politically speaking, the NEA opposes U.S. involvement in Central America, actively supports passage of the Equal Rights Amendment (it temporarily banned its decision-making assembly from meeting in states where ERA had not passed), and supports a complete and immediate halt in the nuclear arms race.
The union has become especially outspoken on this latter point since the defeat of ERA in 1982. Among its efforts on behalf of the nuclear freeze was the formation in that year of a group called Citizens Against Nuclear War. Promising “educational and advocacy materials,” and attempting to put arms control high on the agendas of groups that have not traditionally made it a strong concern, Citizens is currently under the direction of Karen Mulhauser, the former head of the Abortion Rights Action League.
More laden with controversy was the publication in 1983 of junior-high curriculum designed to acquaint students with the “power of nuclear weapons, the consequences of their use, and most importantly, the options available to resolve conflicts among nations by means other than nuclear war.” According to the curriculum introduction, it was not “intended to advance specific political positions.” However, critics on both the Left and the Right saw the profreeze arguments otherwise. Stated a Washington Post editorial: “[It] is not teaching in any normally accepted—or acceptable—sense. It is political indoctrination.” Said a piqued Ronald Reagan: the curriculum seems “to be more aimed at frightening and brainwashing American schoolchildren than … stimulating balanced, intelligent debate.”
Showing its political hand has not exactly helped NEA in its pronouncements that quality education is its number one priority. Scott Thompson of the National Association of Secondary Schools was quoted by Newsweek as saying that “the NEA has misused its charter, its position, and its place to become a boisterous, partisan advocacy group” that has “damaged public education.”
Of a more immediate concern is how NEA’s all-out support of Walter Mondale will be (to the tune of nearly one million volunteers) will affect public education in the early days of a second Reagan administration. “We are willing to sit down and work with this administration,” Futrell said. “I just hope the administration willing to be as open as we are.”
Political maneuverings notwithstanding, however, the real bone of contention for a growing number of individuals—including large numbers of Christians—is the way NEA policy deals with moral and values-laden issues from a decidedly secularist framework. The result has been a firestorm of criticism and counterattack that may be just the opening act of a morality play destined for a long “in-class” run.
Whose Morality?
On close inspection it becomes readily apparent that NEA’s philosophical moorings are set deep into the shifting sands of secular relativism. The disturbing effects of such a foundation can be seen in the association’s positions regarding both homosexuality and abortion.
While not having an official statement regarding homosexuality, the NEA has resolutions decrying the loss of an individual’s civil rights based on “sexual orientation.” Specifically, a 1983 resolution states: “The [NEA] is committed to the achievement of a totally integrated society and calls upon Americans to eliminate by statute and practice barriers of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age, handicap, marital status, and economic status.…”
More enlightening, perhaps, is a criticism of preteen romance novels under joint study by the NEA and the Council on Interracial Books for Children. The overall objective of the study was to “eliminate bias” from children’s books. Interesting, however, was a bias seemingly against the portrayal of heterosexual love. As reported upon by Commentary in one of the briefer articles in the final report, a self-professed lesbian observed that “No romance novel ever gave me the slightest hint that girls (and women) could, and did, stay together.… Fortunately, I eventually escaped from the entrapment of these novels. I am concerned that the adolescent years of those who may be gay or lesbian and are now reading these ‘happiness package’ novels will be made far more difficult than necessary.”
Less subtle is NEA’s support of abortion on demand and its insistence upon teachers and students alike having access to family planning programs and facilities. While insisting that it does not support abortion (see accompanying interview) but “reproductive freedom” (the terminology used in NEA resolutions on this subject), such subtleties are apparently lost on members and parents alike.
As of this writing, three public school teachers are taking NEA to task for its prochoice stand by refusing to pay their union dues. They eventually hope to set a national precedent and force the NEA out of politics completely. “We’re not so foolish to believe that somewhere along the line this is going to have an impact on other teachers,” one of the litigants said. “We just want to see the NEA get back into the union business.”
Indeed, the dichotomy between NEA’s leftist political orientation and the more centrist leanings of its constituency seem destined for a showdown. “The internal structure of the association is very fragile,” says Connaught Marshner, executive vice-president of the Washington-based Free Congress Foundation. “Confrontation from within would most definitely bring significant—and much-needed—changes.”
According to the Commentary article quoted earlier, upward of 70 percent of NEA members claim to be outright conservatives or leaning that way. Such a statistic alone verifies the conclusion of Vanderbilt’s Finn that the NEA has “lost (or jettisoned) its anchor and is drifting rapidly into some well-charted but exceedingly dangerous waters. And probably carrying more than a few teachers and pupils with it.”
Future Lesson Plans
That the NEA must come to grips with its self-professed nonsectarianism seems a foregone conclusion. The moral and ethical makeup of generations to come may truly be at stake. Such was the warning of a Thanksgiving Statement issued last year and signed by 27 prominent scholars, educators, and citizens, including Urie Bronfenbrenner of Cornell University, who said: “Apart from the family, the school is the fundamental institution where our children learn to be human and acquire the unique values of our democratic society. The evidence indicates that schools are now doing a poor job of transmitting such skills and values to our children and adolescents.”
Just how effective Christians from within the NEA can be in reinstilling traditional attitudes into its hierarchy remains to be seen. President Futrell believes unequivocally that so-called traditionalists do indeed have a voice to be reckoned with. When asked by CT about the impact of that voice, she responded that “they [conservatives] can send me personal letters, they can write to the board, and they can lobby our board, our executive committee, or our representative assembly. The minority has a right to be heard—but it is the majority which prevails.”
Of course, most are less than content with their minority status. Out of frustration, some are taking up the offensive by heading for (or starting) private schools. Still others are intent on digging in and fighting.
“The NEA benefits from the public’s perception that it is little more than a quiet collection of teachers with no agenda save better schools,” the Free Congress’s Marshner says. “If Christians would just challenge the decision-making body during its annual assembly and wage a few floor fights, the media would pick it up and the perception would begin to change.
“The key, however, is organization—and persistence.”
Another key to any long-term change may ultimately rest—not surprisingly—with the parents of children in public schools. Consensus on this fact is nearly unanimous, even within the NEA. “We strongly encourage parents to be actively involved in the support of their children,” Futrell told CHRISTIANITY TODAY, “and I think that support is stronger at the local level where parents know the schools, know the teachers, and know the administrators. You need to see what’s going on in the schools, you need to work with the teachers and then school boards in order to make sure the schools are reflecting and doing the kinds of things you believe need to be done.”
Perhaps ironically, Futrell’s statement may be the one solution offering any immediate or future hope for reclaiming the moral void created by her association in the name of nonsectarian education. For the Christian who feels caught in the crossfire, it offers the one sure call to action—a call once again to be salt in a situation desperately in need of flavoring.
