The Teacher's Union Marginalizes Teachers.

Teachers are extraordinary people. They dedicate their lives to inspiring and teaching our children. As a parent, I have delegated substantial educational responsibility for my children to teachers, but it is a delegation that I do not simultaneously abdicate. It is for this reason that I was shocked to read a commentator’s description of the events that occurred at a recent National Education Association convention.

Teachers booed other teachers for their republican beliefs. Further, republican leaning teachers feared retaliation and discrimination by the tight knit Obama leaning teachers. Apparently, when the union sought speakers for the convention, they failed to ask any republican teachers. The dispute was inevitable. The teacher registration package that featured Obama tee shirts was not a mediating gift either. The NEA has in fact endorsed republican candidates for some offices, but has never endorsed a republican candidate for president. 

Perhaps, I should not have been shocked. It has been common knowledge that the NEA has been a parochial union of teachers that support democratic nominees irrespective of policy position. This position seems indisputably contrary to the  non-partisan socratic educational approach that I expect from teachers. Discrimination of any sort, particularly freedom of speech without incrimination, is a fundamental constitutional principle that should be ingrained in our educational programs and taught unambiguously by teachers. But if the NEA attendees’ actions are an example of partisan principles taught in schools, then it is not difficult to understand the problem with public education. Teachers should be smarter than to blindly follow union rhetoric without considering the distinct policy of each POTUS candidate with open eyes.

It is unlikely that the power of the NEA will be marginalized by my position. I am not even a member of the NEA. But teachers who disagree with the NEA’s historic automatic-partisan democratic voting instruction should vehemently resist the marginalization of their own political beliefs by a partisan union irrationally dedicated to democrats rather than non-partisan POTUS candidate education.

Read me.