Among the Educationaloids/Teachers' Tabloid

...It turns out that the "contras" are not too fond of Sandinistan teachers...

...policy toward Nicaragua...

...who like Reagan ought to listen to their consciences...

...There were just seven key votes tallied in the House, including the Equal Rights Amendment...

...One can spend an interesting evening rummaging through a stack of NEA Today, as I recently did with the issues published during 1984...

...May was also the month in which a special insert supplied the texts of amendments to the constitution and bylaws that would be considered at the NEA's upcoming annual convention...

...Granted, 1984 was an election year and thus perhaps atypical...

...In November, the association deplored "increased emphasis on the so-called basics" because of the damper it places on high-school "electives...

...If the National Education Association of the United States has any reservations whatsoever about those pursuits, it has certainly managed to conceal them from its own members...

...AMONG THE EDUCATIONALOIDS TEACHERS' TABLOID by Chester E. Finn, Jr...

...October featured a straightforward Mondale endorsement, coupled with the suggestion that NEA members...

...An updated "legislative report card" gave members a timely reminder of which congressmen deserve support at the polls...

...In May, the association announced its board's endorsement of the "National Week for Peace with Justice" to focus attention on "the human costs of the arms race" and to "spur discussion on the importance of reducing military expenditures...

...Herewith a sampler: January-February...

...This was not a trivial role: "As we go to press, 13 of the more than 100 Democrats serving on the platform committee are Association members...

...national holiday...

...In April, NEA Today took on Arkansas governor Bill Clinton for his proposal (agreed to by the state legislature) to require all teachers in the state to pass a test of minimum academic competency...

...The only front page mention of the incumbent President said "New Reagan budget shortchanges education (again...

...Not to neglect the rest of the world, the June issue takes readers on a brief visit to Chile where, they learn, "dogmatic 'free market' economists trained in the U.S...

...Worried teachers can relax, however, for most administrators don't know what they're doing, and the courts can be counted upon to protect teachers from dismissal...

...The great Nestle boycott, which the NEA had endorsed in 1980, was touted as a success, leaving only the crop of one non-union lettuce grower on the list of "products that NEA urges members not to buy...

...The primary internal publication of the National Education Association is NEA Today, a tabloid that comes out Chester K Finn, Jr...

...Two association members who were part of that delegation report in NEA Today that the "literacy campaign" being waged by the Sandinista government is going swimmingly save for one slight problem: U.S...

...The Supreme Court came in for criticism because of its Grove City decision, which an association vice-president termed "another Reagan Administration-engineered blow to women's rights...

...The centerpiece of the October issue, however, was the report produced by the NEA's "Blue Ribbon Task Force on Educational Excellence," and adopted at the national convention in July...

...A good deal of space is taken up with routine organizational news, profiles of individual members, advertisements (especially by computer companies) and divers services and benefits- retirement planning, cut-rate travel, insurance, and the like...

...As for including any gauge of teaching prowess or professional merit in the calculation of individual salaries, "the NEA is unalterably opposed to so-called merit pay plans...

...The May column defended a congeries of federal programs such as bilingual education and the Women's Educational Equity Act against the "nonsense" and "brutal message" of the Reagan Administration...

...Included in the proposed federal law- support for which is now one of the litmus tests applied to congressional candidates seeking NEA endorsement- are "exclusive representation," the right to strike, and the power to exact dues from nonmembers...

...After a summer hiatus, NEA Today reappeared in October with an issue devoted substantially to the upcoming presidential election, complete with profiles of five teachers who said they had voted for Reagan in 1980 but would not do so in 1984...

...In March, she attacked his interest in school discipline...

...A he electoral politics should come as no surprise, inasmuch as it's been obvious for about a decade that the National Education Association is first and foremost a political union...

...There's a good chance it would become a carbon copy of Chile's...

...If, in other words, the United States would abandon its misguided support for the opposition and leave the Sandinistas to work their will in Nicaragua, literacy programs would flourish and, one supposes, Nicaraguan children would not be distracted from learning exactly what their government wants them to know...

...November was a plea to get out the vote in order to elect "an Administration that's committed to giving schools the resources they need...

...and to perfect the NEA's already-elaborate system of ethnic quotas by requiring the board to "maintain twenty percent ethnic-minority representation" by filling any vacancies that arise between national conventions...

...And everywhere is politics: organizational politics, local politics, state politics, above all national politics...

...In January-February, she explained that Reagan's vaunted "niceness" is a myth and "we in the education community must not be beguiled...

...An interview with Judy Blume, the author of myriad risque novels for teenagers, makes her out to be a victim of "censorship"- because some parents, school boards-and even librarians and teachers-do not consider her books suitable...

...More to the point, educational resources are inadequate because "a major share of Nicaragua's resources is now diverted to defend against the contras, the U.S.-backed insurgents...

...is professor of education and public policy at Vander-bilt University...

...By June, the national political conventions were on the horizon, and NEA Today regaled readers with news of the association's role in drafting the Democratic party platform...

...or mesmerized...

...The Texas legislature comes under fire for having passed a comprehensive education reform law-the one conceived by Ross Perot-that the NEA found "severely flawed," primarily because of its emphasis on merit pay and teachers' career ladders...

...At year's end, we discover that the lettuce grower wasn't enough to satisfy the association's urge to boycott, so Coors beer is added, not only because of an unresolved labor dispute at the brewery, but also because Joseph Coors "is a substantial contributor to right-wing organizations," notably the Heritage Foundation, which "backs tuition tax credits and vouchers to 'promote educational excellence.' " Good gracious...

...Some appear genuinely helpful to teachers...

...none but members may subscribe Ranging in length from 24 to 32 pages, laid out with colorful graphics and many photographs, it is almost certainly the largest-circulation publication in the entire field of education as well as the principal means by which the NEA stays in touch with its legions...

...This is the issue in which the NEA rates members of Congress according to their stands on selected "issues of concern to NEA...

...Occasionally the values that guide an organization and the priorities that govern it emerge with special clarity from its communications with its own members...

...Included were proposals to bar from active membership anyone "serving in an administrative capacity" in the schools...

...This issue of NEA Today contained the association's annual financial report, too, from which we see that it spent $75 million in 1983, $30 million of this sum for "organizational development" and another three million for government relations and political affairs...

...have effectively dismantled a once-thriving education system...

...Lest members not see the connection to the association's domestic political agenda, it is spelled out for them: "What would happen to our public school system if Ronald Reagan's most zealous rightwing supporters were given a free hand...

...senators were also recorded seven times, including the bill to establish a Martin Luther King, Jr...

...Members learned of another friend-of-the-court brief in a case testing the validity and inclusiveness of "union shop" arrangements, a brief specifically urging the Supreme Court to dissolve limits on the use of "agency fees" (dues paid unwillingly by employees who decline to be union members) for "political and ideological activities unrelated to bargaining...

...What was more remarkable, to me at least, in the pages of NEA Today during 1984 was the pervasiveness of ideology, both with respect to educational issues and to national and international affairs loosely cloaked in enough education to justify their discussion...

...Presumably resources would also be freed up for the other domestic and international pursuits of the Sandinista regime...

...Texas governor Mark White has indicated that the state teachers' association was a substantial roadblock on the route to school reform...

...In April, any members troubled by the Association's political activism were advised that "it is unprofessional and patently irresponsible for educators to abandon the political realm" and that the NEA's huge political action committee "could well be called our Educational Excellence Commission...

...eight times a year...

...All members automatically receive it...

...Its principal recommendation was that starting teacher pay across the country be hiked to a minimum of $24,000...

...March featured a famous debate on the pros and cons of continuing to teach English grammar in the schools -it was far from clear which side prevailed-and a scathing attack on the Reagan Administration's civil rights policies and practices, notably including the reconstitution of the Civil Rights Commission and the selection as its staff director of Linda Chavez, "a former top aide to American Federation of Teachers President Albert Shanker...

...But Walter Mondale's name appeared on the cover of five issues (and his photo on one...

...The NEA had joined in an amicus brief on the other side...

...And the "President's Viewpoint"-a monthly column on page two by association chief Mary Hatwood Futrell-was devoted to the national elections six of eight times...

...State and local affiliates, of course, also have their own publications...

...Also featured this month was an account of NEA efforts to enact a federal collective bargaining law for public employees, so that the dozen or so states that have thus far resisted teacher unionization would no longer have a choice...

...Many of the articles are harmless...

...The budgets of state and local affiliates, and of political action committees, are not included...

...But hither and yon are discussions of education policy, domestic social policy, and foreign policy that are, as it were, revelatory...

...The highlight of the December issue, however, at least for watchers of NEA's office of "Peace Programs and International Relations," is an account of a visit to Nicaragua last summer by twenty American educators...

...NEA Today also reminded members of the union's steadfast support for bilingual education programs of the kind that are slow to move children into "total English" classrooms...

...to drop the limit on the number of terms that an individual can serve as an association officer...

...A summary of recent research findings on how school districts handle "incompetent" teachers located the onus squarely on administrators with nary a hint that the teaching profession ought to police itself...

...On the facing page was a loving interview with Fritz Mondale's fifth-grade teacher in Elmore: "He always had a big grin on his face," she recalled, "and he was constantly helping people...