A Relic of the New Age: The National Education Association
Kagan, Robert W.
Robert W. Kagan A RELIC OF THE NEW AGE: THE NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION Providing teachers with uncertifiable leadership. The 1970s were a remarkable decade for the National Education...
...As Terry Herndon said just before the election, "I would entertain the possibility that it would be easier to let the department go than to live with it under Reagan...
...It wa s an early sell-out, for Carter later cut the education budget by about $1.6 billion...
...A t its July convention, meanwhile, the Representative Assembly passed a resolution which accorded with Alonso's views after the fact...
...But, most important, they have been uncompromising in struggling to increase their own power at the expense of the power of the NEA rank and file...
...Although not every NEA document takes this tone, of course, the ideology behind it has subtly influenced many of the NEA's educational policies...
...One result of such exaggerated concern with minority representation and minority " r i g h t s " has been to turn education policy in many cases into a vehicle for these causes...
...With precipitous declines in student enrollment, the last thing teachers need is to compete for jobs with tmcertified bilingual specialists...
...One was the' transfer of power from state affiliates to the national headquarters in Washington...
...In fact, the NEA's relations with the last two have been a source of conflict with the U.S...
...The second is that pressures on union leaders invariably come from the Left...
...It is surprising that a teachers' union should deny this...
...Why should a teacher be less likely to vote on these issues than a doctor on the issue ofnational health insurance or an auto worker on the question of tariffs...
...Indeed, its position on defense, foreign policy, and nuclear energy have been downright conservative...
...Thirty-four percent preferred criterion-referenced tests...
...Griffin Act...
...Teachers are still an important constituency in American politics, but politicians can no longer rely on the NEA to muster their support...
...Congress...
...Alonso, a former NEA president, claimed that Salvadoran teachers had been murdered by right-wing forces allied with the government, and that their union, ANDES, had been suppressed...
...Knowing in advance how much a new Department of Education would increase their clout, the NEA leaders gave this question their highest priority for four years...
...and Number 9 was "Having a school district that determines its Third World students' intelligence by employing culturally biased tests...
...Now, the NEA will be lucky to achieve even its more limited goals of 1972...
...and 12 percent said it would have a negative impact...
...In fact, the NEA is an example, in microcosm, of what society might look like if it pursued every imaginable affirmative action policy, instituted quota systems, and practiced consistent reverse discrimination...
...Herndon's artful characterization of the enemy without, however useful it might have been in rallying the forces, ignored and masked some deeper problems that the NEA faces today...
...Those teaching in the traditionally liberal cities belong largely to the rival American Federation of Teachers.*) Between 40 and 50 percent of NEA members are Republicans (although, for some reason, the NEA refuses to release any such data on its membership), and a fair portion are probably conservative Democrats...
...but the political activity prevailing in the United States is something one could never understand unless one had seen it...
...More than a century ago a Frenchman came to America and later wrote a book for his countrymen telling them what he had seen here...
...The NEA's strident opposition to standardized testing has been influenced by similar ideological and political considerations...
...emphasis added] No sooner do you set foot on American soil than you find y o u r s e l f in a sor.t of tumult...
...But the NEA remained silent...
...This concern for human rights, especially for teachers, would be more credible were it not so selectively applied...
...The 1970s were a remarkable decade for the National Education Association...
...Can it be that they agreed with his positions on some of those issues...
...Like the AFL-CIO, the NEA wants national collective bargaining rights for teachers, but it won't get it from the present Administration...
...Reagan's position on education was generally clear during the campaign: He opposed the Department of Education...
...If teachers weren't thinking about education issues in 1980, what reason is there to think they were in I976, when "teacher power" was supposed to have delivered the White House to Jimmy Carter and earned the NEA a very large favor...
...When asked what the greatest achievement of the NEA has been, its leaders invariably point, albeit with a shaky finger these days, to the Department of Education...
...Alonso replied that the question was "stupidly" worded and denied its implications...
...As for the NEA leadership, Terry Herndon, executive director since 1973, bluntly describes himself as a "left-wing Democrat," a political position which his fellow NEA leaders clearly share...
...I n recent years, the NEA has had the distinction of being the only major education group in the country not to oppose the short-lived "Lau" regulations on bilingual education put forward by the Department of Education before President Reagan took office...
...Number 6 was "Having a school district where Third World students attend subscribe to the doctrines espoused by Jensen, Shockley, Moynihan, and other similarly harmful-tohuman-being ideologies" (Moynihan...
...the handbook listed eleven circumstances whereby "Third World people are being miseducated...
...Only a teacher can know whether a program is working for a particular student, or when a student is ready to leave it...
...In other words, 66 percent had no objection to the norm-referenced tests the NEA i s trying to eliminate...
...Different programs work for different ethnic groups in different parts of the country, and Washington is no place to design these programs...
...Although Ashbrook THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1982 I7 is an inveterate critic of the NEA, the evidence strongly supports his claim...
...The other was the increased role of the large permanent staff in that headquarters in making and carrying out NEA national policies...
...Finally, under section four of the NEA constitution entitled "Ethnic-Minority Guarantee," there appears the following stipulation: If after eleven (11) years no member of an ethnic-minority group has served as President, nominations at the subsequent Representative Assembly shall be restricted to members of such groups_9 After 1983, the NEA has one more open election to look forward to...
...The Frenchman to whom President Reagan referred is, of course, Alexis de Tocqueville...
...any state fail to comply, the NEA may refuse to seat its delegation at the assembly meeting...
...Although the NEA boasts an 8,000-delegate Representative Assembly, which adopts resolutions and elects officers, its power is severely limited...
...further on, the delegates of a district are hurrying to town to consult about some local improvements...
...the " l a d i e s o f c o l o u r " of New Orleans...
...Department of Labor under the Landrum...
...He told them that in America when a citizen saw a problem that needed solving, he would cross the street and talk to a neighbor about it and the f i r s t thing you know a committee would be formed and before long the problem would be solved .. "And t h e n , " he added, "you may not believe this but not a single bureaucrat would ever have been involved...
...3. Acknowledge that power concedes to nothing o t h e r than power s u p e r i o r to i t s e l f . (Remember, when you confront the system, the system will deal with you...
...This puzzling fact is most likely attributable to the powerful leadership of Mr...
...Only they can remedy this problem, b u t it won't be easy...
...Politically, of course, the NEA's "teacher power," once thought by many to be the new, unstoppable force in national politics, had sustained a severe blow to its credibility...
...On another page entitled "What I as an educator must know in order to deal effectively with negating the miseducation of Third World students," among the eight points listed were: 1. Acknowledge that the society in the United S t a t e s is r a c i s t . . G i v e n that the e d u c a t i o n a l system is a microcosm of the society, it, too, is racist...
...they are used to evaluate teachers, which is unfair...
...The official program for the evening's events had, under the names of recipients, the words "black" and "white" in parentheses...
...Congress want to reduce the federal share from a little over eight percent to around seven percent...
...More important, however, the NEA vote in 1980 was a rebellion of sorts against the NEA leadership, a protest against the direction in which the NEA has been heading...
...In that short period the 134-year-old teachers' professional association pulled itself out of a deep sleep and awoke as a giant of a union, with almost two million members, seemingly endless power, and a modern weapon: a political action committee of its very own...
...But of the over one hundred resolutions passed at the NEA's most recent convention, not one mentioned Poland, though unions throughout the world have expressed at least token support for Lech Walesa and his Solidarity movement...
...One is that union members ask only one thing of their leaders: that they keep fighting for "more...
...There are two fundamental truths about unions...
...William Raspberry wrote: "Having cut the deal, the NEA can't bring itself to criticize Carter for the present budget disaster . . . . As a result, that 'strong wfice for education' has been muted to a whisper just when a few well-placed screams might do the most good...
...The author would like to express his thanks to the Institute for Educational Affairs for helping to fund the research for this article...
...Elections for these delegates, therefore, must be fixed to ensure proportional representation...
...We have been whipped in the electoral process," he admitted, "but not in the political disposition of the American people...
...The NEA opposes tuition tax credits, but proposals still linger in the wings...
...In short, the Lau regulations were inimical to teachers' interests, yet the NEA did not oppose them...
...The real enemy, he proclaimed, was the "New Right," which had somehow beaten the NEA to the punch in "tapping" the powers of Congress...
...The latter assumption makes the most sense...
...The resolution called for THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1982 15 "the immediate termination of aft United States military aid and involvement in El Salvador" and directed the "NEA Board of Directors, the Committee on International Relati6ns, the officers, and staff to actively oppose during 1981-82 any Executive actions, legislation, or appropriations by the Congress for United States military aid to the government of El Salvador...
...Terry Herndon declared the NEA to be in a state of emergency, but not because the American voters had rejected the association's programs and its Presidential candidate...
...Number, 2 was "Having a school where the special education classes _9 . . have a disproportionate number of Third World students...
...With his friend Gustave: de Beaumont, Tocqueville came to America a century and a half ago, disembarking at New York in May, 1831, and returning to France in February, 1832...
...Whatever the NEA's motives for acting this way, they certainly are not educational...
...In fact, in its nationwide poll of public school teachers, the NEA asked whether teachers preferred "criterionreferenced" tests, which the NEA favors, to the "norm-referenced" tests, which the NEA abhors...
...Needless to say, the NEA's Committee on International Relations has recommended that " a t a later date, efforts should be made to repeal this legislation...
...And several-too many prisons...
...The wording implies that the pronuclear faction in the NEA is as strong as the antinuclear faction...
...Some educational leaders even wondered whether "respect" for the cultural heritage .of students would have required Puerto Rican teachers to teach Puerto Rican students and Mexican teachers to teach Mexican students...
...The direction of education is certainly not under its control, at least not so far as its top legislative goals are concerned...
...There is also a Committee on Women's Concerns (even though women make up almost 70 percent of NEA membership) whose job it is to "evaluate the use and effect of Modules I and II of Leadership Training for Multicultural Sex Equity[!]" and to make recommendations to the NEA regarding women's issues "which include but are not limited to education, employment, legislation, and curriculum [emphasis added...
...Having diligently practiced their English, they conversed as well as observed...
...They don't want to admit that there is a growing rift between the increasingly conservative leanings of the NEA membership, as witnessed in the election, and the consistent liberal and left-wing policies formulated and carried out by the NEA hierarchy...
...Not one mentioned Cuba or the Soviet Union...
...and (3...
...Congress, the NEA has lent its name to the coalition of organizations which has organized the March 28 "March on Harrisburg," knowing well the educational impact of a demonstration Which attracts the attention of the national media...
...In its poll of public school teachers, the NEA found that 34 percent said the Department would have a positive impact on public education...
...The insider's place they enjoyed in the Carter Administration is, for the moment at least, a thing of the past...
...On March 28, 1981, however, the NEA co-sponsored a "March on Harrisburg," the theme of which, boldly printed across all the *The AFT, led by Albert Shanker, has ironically been far more moderate than the NEA on most issues...
...During the 1970s, the differences of opinion between leaders and members were buried under the avalanche of the NEA's monumental political successes, but the NEA's failures in 1980 have exposed them to new light...
...to specify how lofig students would have to remain in bilingual programs...
...The Reagan Administration will not remain in power forever, but there will always be teachers, and the NEA will still be their most powerful voice...
...At-the time, the NEA's Representative Assembly had passed no resolution on El Salvador...
...It's not their only concern, but it's important enough to play a role when they choose a President...
...The NEA leadership has an additional motive for acting independently in advancing its ideological concerns...
...In 1978, after the NEA had dominated the previous Democratic National Convention by flooding it with NEA delegates, taken credit for the election of Jimmy Carter, and cashed it in for a Department of Education, NEA President John Ryor promised, "We will become the foremost political power in the nation...
...Indeed, the NEA had an outright quota system until it was forced to change its policies by the threat of legal action by the U.S...
...The resolution adopted by the Representative Assembly says, "The Association supports establishment of education programs to increase public understanding of energy and alternative energy sources...
...For a closer look at the essentially undemocratic workings of the NEA executive, consider its recent forays into the ideologically charged areas of nuclear energy and American policy toward El Salvador...
...They endorsed Carter in 1979, on the very morning after he signed the legislation creating the Department--a full fourteen months before the election...
...Teachers opposed to Lau were also worried about their jobs...
...O O e O O O O b O O O O O O I ~ O O Q O O O O D Q O B O O O B O O O 9 0 0 e O J t l O O O I . . . . . 0 . . . . . . O O O 0 0 0 0 . . . . . 0 0 . . . . U ~ g I ~ O 0 , 0 0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0 . . . . . . O . . . . . . . . . . . . O . . . . . . . . . Otp Delba Winthrop THE VOLUNTARY SPIRIT OF TOCQUEVILLE' S AMERICA One hundred and fifty years after a famous journey, a reminder...
...Early in March, the Pennsylvania State Education Association, based in Harrisburg, demanded that the NEA withdraw its sponsorship of the "March on Harrisburg," but the demand was ignored...
...They have taken every opportunity to advocate left-wing social programs which in no way reflect the views of their members...
...the occupant of the White House, Andrew Jackson (whose state of civilization was a matter of some controversy...
...These are questions that NEA members should be asking themselves...
...What does all this mean for the future...
...Acting with similar independence, the NEA's Director of International Relations, Braulio Atonso, last spring sent out a collection of materials deploring American support for the Duarte government in El Salvador...
...Yet, some three-quarters of a million NEA members voted for Reagan anyway...
...Despite the fact that the NEA officially endorsed Carter more than a year before the 1980 election and waged a Manichean campaign of propaganda depicting Ronald Reagan as the greatest enemy of education, largely because he opposed the Department of Education, and Jimmy Carter as the greatest friend, because he created it, nevertheless, almost half ti~e NEA's members voted for Reagan...
...The headline reads "Yesterday, a bright child.--Today, below average.'" The NEA's chief objections to testing are that (1) tests are damaging to a child's "self-concept...
...Executive Director Terry Herndon said the NEA's goal was nothing less than " t o tap the legal, political, and economic powers of the U.S...
...In 1972, NEA President Catherine Barrett declared, "We are the biggest potential political fighting force in this country and we are determined to control the direction of education...
...a confused clamor r i s e s on every s i d e , and a thousand voices are heard at Once, each expressing some social requirements...
...A majority lives in traditionally conservative areas--the rural South , the Midwest, and the Southwest...
...Teachers opposed these regulations largely because they did n o t want the federal government to tell them how to teach...
...Recently, the NEA tried to bring a similar teachers' "union" from Cuba to the United States, but the American government has denied visas to all "representatives of purported labor organizations in countries where such organizations are in fact insmaments of a totalitarian state...
...Not only did NEA leaders endorse the losing candidate in the last Presidential race, but they also sufferedmassive defections within their own membership...
...government...
...They did so not only without the sanction of the Representative Assembly, but over the objection of the Pennsylvania state affiliate...
...When asked whether he thought that inviting teachers' "unions" from the Soviet Union and Cuba was a political statement that might lend legitimacy to their pretensions, Mr...
...Representative John Ashbrook of Ohio has expressed concern that the teachers' union has put "power first, politics second, and education third...
...These were issues of primary import for the NEA leaders, and Reagan, in their view, was dead wrong on every single one...
...24 percent preferred norm-referenced tests...
...At last there seemed no lin~it to the NEA's power...
...or, teachers do vote with educational issues in mind, a claim that the NEA had always passionately made until so many teachers went out and voted for Reagan...
...Kagan is a graduate student in the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and former assistant editor at the Public Interest...
...the Snuth...
...At t h e J u l y convention, NEA delegates were presented with a handbook prepared for "Teacher Leaders" by the Human Relations Committee of the NEA's Minnesota affiliate...
...The half-million metnber AFT has vigorously opposed anti-testing legislation, and there is no reason to believe that NEA members are any more of a mind on this issue than on" all other issues...
...he opposed increasing the role of the federal government in education...
...Their breeding, their natural intelligence and curiosity, and their official letters of introduction--not to mention the "excessive" national pride of the Americans who perceived that these Europeans wanted to learn something iu them-gave Tocqueville and Beaumont immediate enteric into the best social, intellectual, political, and penal circles...
...I would be tempted to assert that Tocqueville could have written Democracy in America without ever having left his study in France were it not for a singular remark in the book: It .is not impossible to conceive the immense freedom enjoyed by the Americans, and one can also form an idea of their extreme equality...
...The results of their journey, in addition to a more than perfunctory report on American penal theory and" practice, were Beaumont's Marie, a novel with statistical appendices, now justly fallen into obscurity, and Tocqueville's still-celebrated-, two-volume Democracy in America, published in 1835 and 1840...
...When the NEA decided to enter big-time politics, two critical changes occurred...
...NEA President Willard McGuire defended NEA participation in this antinuclear demonstration by pointing to the "educational impact" it would have, but there was no hiding the fact that NEA leaders had acted on their own in joining a coalition against nuclear energy...
...posters, was "Keep Three-Mile Island Shut Down...
...the intransigently indolent, though often impecunious, aristocrats of Delba lVinthrop is visiting assistant professor of Political Science at Duke University...
...The NEA is down, but it's not out...
...34 percent thought both kinds of tests were important...
...The NEA's greatest prize, the Department of Education, is in jeopardy...
...During their ninemonth stay the travelers did see much of America: the staid intellectual lights of Boston...
...NEA members must overcome their passivity...
...So long as the NEA's ruling oligarchy is allowed to pursue its own political interests and advance its ideology, the NEA membership will never receive the kind of representation they need and American education deserves...
...The NEA's highest noneducational priority has been the ratification of ERA, and the NEA has been in the forefront of the movement to eliminate "sex-stereotyping" from school curricula...
...The NEA constitution requires that "members from ethnic minorities shall comprise at least twenty percent" of the board of directors and of the executive committee...
...Along with Ralph Nader, the NEA has led the fight against the testing industry and the use of so-called "normreferenced" tests to judg~ student achievement...
...55 percent said it would have no impact...
...the" civilized, half-civilized, and uncivilized dwellers at the last outpost of civilization at Saginaw, Michigan...
...Many of the NEA's policies thus put it arm-in-arm with other liberal groups which together form a potent liberal coalition...
...His analysis of the political processes a't work in the last election was unequivocal: In sum, ! say to you that a cohort of chronic tax resisters, congenital reactionaries, dangerous witch hunters, energized super-patriots, wayward dogma peddlers, and vitriolic race haters have coalesced into a sophisticated political force that has nearly overwhelmed a too comfortable and too stale progressive political movement...
...It meets only once a year, and obviously cannot monitor the NEA staff to see that its wishes are carried out...
...The NEA has waged a substantial propaganda campaign against testing, using posters showing a little girl with a giant tear running down her cheek...
...2) they discriminate, particularly against the poor and minorities, by employing a distinct cultural bias...
...Under the heading "What is Miseducation of Third World People...
...Now, on nuclear energy, the NEA's official position has been that it has no position...
...For instance, another resolution passed at the July convention was entitled "Education in Guafemala '~' and it employed the usual rhetoric: "The NEA supports the teachers and students of Guatemala in their pursuit of academic freedom and quality education," therefore, "The Association urges the federal government to deny all military and economic aid to Guatemala...
...Will its leaders ever develop policies that conform to the wishes and best interests of teachers...
...No union so large can fail to have influence...
...The NEA further demands that state delegations to the Representative Assembly have minority representation that at least equals the percentage of minorities in each state...
...The NEA membership has never been a predominantly liberal group...
...That, of course, was before the election of Ronald Reagan, before the ousting of the Democratic majority in the Senate, and before Americans had done some reordering of their own...
...NEA leaders have stopped representing the interests of their members and of American education...
...Issues such as bilingual" education, federal aid to education, and the Department of Education affect a teacher's livelihood in important ways...
...and, to require schools to create programs that would demonstrate "respect for the culture and cultural heritage" of students with poor English...
...We want leaders and staff with sufficient clout that they may roam the halls of Congress and collect votes to reorder the priorities of the United States of America...
...The 26-year-old magistrate and candidate for a Golden Fleece Award had managed to obtain a commission from the French government to study the American penal system...
...but NEA leaders can barely decide which is worse: no Department of Education or a Department of Education under Ronald Reagan...
...Since 1970, the NEA's International Relations Office, under Alonso's guidance, has conducted exchanges with the Educational and Scientific Workers Union of the USSR...
...Terry Herndon describes standardized tests as "similar to narcotics" and compares the Educational Testing Service to "armaments manufacturers who say guns don't kill, people do...
...the decadent bibulous society of Baltimore...
...All around you everything is on the move: here the peopl~ of a d i s t r i c t are assembled to d i s c u s s the possibility of building a church...
...Ralph Nader notwithstanding, the NEA has little support for its drive to abolish testing...
...Now that Reagan is in office, the NEA finds itself paddling upstream...
...One NEA official, Sally Potter, speculates that those who voted for Reagan were probably thinking about the hostage issue, a disingenuous explanation to say the least...
...and 9 percent had no opinion...
...Surprisingly, this legislative amendment did not even mention Salvadoran teachers, the defense of whom is the typical justification for NEA pronouncements on American foreign policy...
...In addition to sending these "educational" materials to local NEA affiliates, Alonso directed the NEA to co-sponsor a speaking tour in the United States by Tulio Mendoza, leader of the ANDES teachers' union and an opponent of the Salvadoran government...
...A t its 119th Annual Convention last July, the NEA's leaders sounded the alarm...
...I f we exclude its Washington leadership, the strongest forces in the NEA are minority groups...
...The chief sponsor of this tour was the Committee In Solidarity With the People of El Salvador, a group which, according to journalist Penn Kemble, "supports and openly campaigns for the guerrilla movement, the Democratic Revolutionary Front (FDR), which is fighting to overthrow the Duarte government" and has become " a mere auxiliary to the Marxist-Leninist command structure of the guerrilla army...
...Perhaps they were thinking about the Nixon pardon...
...Not one mentioned Afghanistan, where presumably teachers, among others, have been deprived of their rights...
...It is a hollow monument to days past when NEA leaders could have their pictures taken with the President and claim to be the most powerful force in American education...
...The standard line in the NEA's Washington headquarters these days is that teachers don't think about their "personal self-interest" when they vote in Presidential elections...
...he favored tuition tax credits...
...According to the NEA, the blame for declining test scores should be placed not on teachers, but on society as a whole...
...The permanent staff is very much beyond the control of the NEA's rank and file...
...n the Washington offices, moreover, there is a Committee on Minority Affairs "composed of four representatives of each of the following ethnic-minority membership groups: American Indian/Alaskan Native, Asian, Black, and Chicano-Hispano...
...And lest...
...Awful as that may have sounded to some, the giant was just flexing its muscles...
...But.perhaps what he really should have been questioning is the political astuteness of the NEA's leadership itself...
...Either teachers do not vote with educational issues in mind, in which case the NEA's endorsement is and has been worth much less than its leaders claim...
...he opposed federally mandated bilingual education 14 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1982 programs...
...Shanker himself, whose ideology might be described these days as almost neo-cpnservatire...
...Alonso had acted on his own judgment, and in an interview he justified his position as a defense of teachers throughout the world...
...In any event, the NEA can't have it both ways...
...They showed their dissatisfaction by voting for Reagan and a more conservative Congress, even while they were paying for the campaign of his opponent with their union dues--and for pro-abortion lobbying, antidefense spending lobbying, anti-nuclear energy lobbying, pro-bilingual education lobbying, anti-testing lobbying, and lobbying on a host of issues about which NEA members simply disagree with NEA leaders...
...In the "March on Harrisburg," for instance, McGuire was quite candid about the role that this political consideration played in the NEA's decision to cosponsor the event over the objection of its state affiliate: _9 . . in support of the United Mine Workers, the International Association of Machinists and other unions who support NEA's educational objectives in the U.S...
...One form of power politics in which most lobbying groups partake is called "coalitionbuilding...
...The question is, then, can the NEA change...
...These regulations would have given the Department extraordinary powers, by allowing it to force schools to hire uncertified bilingual teachers, while regular teachers were being retrained and certified bilingual teachers recruited...
...To begin with, the American public favors testing overwhelmingly, and teachers themselves are severely divided on the issue...
...In fact, this rift is not new...
...there they are busy choosing a representative...
...he opposed the Equal Rights Amendment...
...elsewhere i t ' s the village f a r m e r s who have left their furrows to discuss the plan for a road or a school . . . . And here is yet another gathering which regards drunkenness as the main source 18 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1982...
...Responding to these figures, one NEA official said, "Mostteachers aren't too aware of politics...
...Eastern entrepreneurs and rough and ready Western adventurers...
...For all that, there has been little evidence of discontent within the AFT membership...
...These "ethnic subcommittees," as the NEA calls them, are supposed to make sure that the goals for ethnic-minority representation are being followed, and to "provide minority input on NEA programs and policies" just in case the 20 percent minority quotas on the executive committee, on the board of directors, and the proportional, "at least," representation in the state delegations all fail to do so...
...But NEA leaders deny it because they don't want to admit that at least half their members disagree with their stands on a whole range of issues, both educational and non-educational...
...Robert W. Kagan A RELIC OF THE NEW AGE: THE NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION Providing teachers with uncertifiable leadership...
...Now it simply refers to its quotas as "goals...
...What they overlooked, however, was how much more important getting the Department was to them than to NEA members...
...The NEA wants the federal government to take over a third of education spending, but Reagan and the Robert IV...
...Incredibly, when the NEA handed out its Human and Civil Rights Awards for 1981, 16 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1982 recipients were designated by race...
...The true reasons for his visit were to escape the political pressures endangering his career in the aftermath of the July Revolution of 1830 and to see "what a great republic is like...
...2. Acknowledge that the educational system in the United S t a t e s was not e s t a b l i s h e d to produce Third World people who are politically and economically s a l i e n t [sicl and who also maintain a Third World consciousness...
Vol. 15 • February 1982 • No. 2
