210. Education's Most Powerful Voice: The Underground History of
American Education by John Taylor Gatto from archive.org
Education's
Most Powerful Voice
At the 1996 annual convention of the
National Education Association, delegates were delighted to learn that the union would pay them a $1000
bounty if they could succeed in
getting themselves elected as a delegate to the upcoming Democratic
National Convention. No similar
prize was offered for
selection as a Republican Party delegate. The offer proved a powerful motivater,
about an eighth of all the delegates who
nominated Governor Clinton for President were NEA members and the union
carried more weight at the DNC
than California, America's most populous state.
President Clinton had been the featured
speaker at the NEA gathering. When he entered a convention hall hung with Clinton-Gore signs and
crisscrossed with strobe lights, Clinton
T-shirts and buttons were everywhere, the band blared out rock and roll,
and Arkansas delegates pretended
to play huge make-believe saxophones. The teacher crowd rocked the room. This was its moment to
howl.
The NEA bills itself
as "education's most powerful voice in Washington." It claims
credit for creating the U.S.
Department of Education, for passing Goals 2000, and for stopping the Senate from approving vouchers. Its
platform resolutions and lobbying instructions to delegates include the following planks: "mandatory
kindergarten with compulsory
attendance"; opposition to "competency testing" as a
condition of employment; "direct
and confidential" child access to psychological, social, and health
services without parental knowledge;
"programs in the public schools for children from birth"; a
resolution (B-67) criticizing
homeschooling as inadequate and calling for licenses issued by the state licensing agency for those who
instruct in such schools; and a curriculum "approved by the state department of
education."
The NEA also called for statehood for
the District of Columbia, and announced its undying opposition to all voucher plans and tuition tax
credit plans "or funding formulas
that have the same effect." It threatened a boycott against Shell
Oil for alleged environmental
pollution in Nigeria. The NEA had a foreign policy as well as a pedagogical agenda.
For all this flash and filigree, while
the NEA and other professional unions have had some effect on micropolitics in schooling, they have
surprisingly little effect on public
policy. For all the breast-beating, vilification, and sanctimony which
swirl about the union presence in
schooling, where real power is concerned the professional organizations are not the movers and
shakers they are reputed to be. Mostly unions are good copy for journalists and not much more.
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