Among the Educationaloids/A New. Age Lobby Unrepentant
Finn, Chester E. Jr.
AMONG THE EDUCATIONALOIDS A NEW AGE LOBBY UNREPENTANT ne might well have expected, as leaders of the National Education Association gathered in early July for its 125th annual meeting, that sheer...
...It's becoming too political," Erhardt said...
...You had to be in Los Angeles to understand," responded Bismarck Education Association president Barbara Livermont, who naturally was present at the convention and voted for the resolution, though she conceded, "I don't think many of our local members would advocate it here...
...This is professionalism...
...Among them, it may be hoped, is another Chesterton, another Maritain, another Newman, another Ronald Knox, another Dorothy Day, another Gerard Manley Hopkins, another Edith Stein — converts all...
...Four Democratic hopefuls (Babbitt, Gephardt, Jackson, Simon) turned up to greet the delegates and kiss the ring of the union whose members occupied some 270 delegate (and eighty-five alternate) chairs at the 1984 Democratic convention...
...Seven of them are my godchildren, and I must confess that some of us, to our shame, earnestly tried to delay them, on the grounds of the growing disorder in the Catholic Church...
...Though such arrangements typically function within public education and thus don't raise the specter of aid to private schools, the NEA remains implacable...
...Perhaps more noteworthy, two-thirds describe their political philosophy as conservative or tending toward conservatism...
...Amazingly, while the REVIEW is a lightning rod for "papist" pilgrims, it is also ecumenical in spirit...
...The views expressed here are his own...
...But it's a particular problem at a time when the United States needs better education and when teachers need more exacting standards...
...And now the licenses given to teachers aboard the ladder will last for ten years at a time instead of five...
...These new Catholics and the extraordinary Pope to whom they belong are a very present comfort when one is tempted to despair...
...A particularly egregious example has lately occurred in Tennessee where former Governor Lamar Alexander's celebrated "career ladder' by which teachers can advance in status and pay on the basis of their performance—has been seriously undermined, largely due to the efforts of the Tennessee Education Association...
...Anne Roche Muggeridge, daughter-in-law of convert Malcolm Muggeridge, has said in her recent book, The Desolate City: Revolution in the Catholic Church (Harper & Row): "Because the integrity of its message has been betrayed, the Catholic Church is in ruins...
...The 1988 presidential elections loomed on the horizon in Los Angeles, too...
...stance regarding educational practice is profoundly stodgy: don't change a thing and, if you must, then change it only by doing more of the same...
...NEA resolutions tick off N.D...
...teachers," read a headline in the Bismarck Tribune on July 7. A number of Bismarck-area teachers were dismayed by accounts of what their union had done in Los Angeles...
...But this is characteristic of the NEA...
...Presumably any candidate endorsement will come next spring—or sooner, if the powerful executive committee makes a decision without consulting members...
...Following the pattern established in 1976, the candidate of choice will surely be a Democrat, though according even to NEA surveys only 43 percent of teachers are Democrats (while 29 percent are Republicans, 28 percent unaffiliated...
...See my "Teachers' Tabloid," TAS, March 1985...
...and to denounce efforts to make English the official language of the United States...
...Under consideration in Nashville is a further change that would allow teachers to ascend the ladder (and salary scale) simply by engaging in in-service training rather than by demonstrating skill in the classroom...
...Similarly, while the NEA's hatred of education "vouchers" is well known, more and more communities are adopting such mechanisms as "magnet schools" whereby students and parents may not come into possession of an actual "chit" but can in fact choose their schools on the basis of differences and preferences, with some schools gaining and other schools losing students in consequence...
...It's likely that most teachers are not especially political and are a good deal more involved with what is happening in their classrooms, schools, and communities than with their union's antics at the state and national levels...
...T he follies of this latest convention 1 produced at least one flicker of latent revolt...
...And faced by the new (though minuscule) menace of parents who prefer to teach their own children at home, the Association declared flatly that "home instruction programs by parental preference cannot provide the child with an adequate educational experience" and that the only tolerable kind would involve a state-approved curriculum and be taught by "persons who meet state education licensure requirements...
...Lots more bricks were piled onto the walls of militancy and mediocrity...
...They also voted to oppose the confirmation of Judge Robert Bork...
...Among the converts to Roman Catholicism who write for the REVIEW are Paul C. Vitz, George William Rutler, Sheldon Vanauken, John C. Cort, Walker Percy, Thomas Howard, L. Brent Bozell, James J. Thompson Jr., and Peter Kreeft...
...They forced their way past us anyway, thank God...
...Besides serving as convention delegates, NEA members are influential in state primaries and caucuses—as schoolteachers, they are marvelously well distributed across the country—and the NEA's "PAC" is among the richest in the country...
...Dakotan discontent is itself not enough to change the NEA's direction or remake its leadership...
...Only an impulse toward self-destruction would induce a teachers' union knowingly to allow itself to become—and then to remain—the nation's premier defender of the educational status quo at a time when the public is responding to the boldest and farthest-reaching school reform movement in memory...
...What's more, contrary to the shibboleth that Catholicism is a superstitious religion for the ignorant, an unusually high proportion of the new Catholics consists of writers and intellectuals...
...Why does the membership tolerate it...
...On all counts, the NEA leadership invites just the opposite...
...Over the last quarter century, the number of converts to Roman Catholicism slowed to a trickle...
...Today there is a new Oxford Movement afoot in America...
...And they referred to the organization's executive committee a decision on whether to endorse a "gay rights" march on Washington...
...For example, the NEA cannot abide any sort of "merit pay" or differentiation among teachers on the basis of performance...
...Not everything the delegates worked on had to do with schooling...
...As for distributing contraceptives in schools, North Dakota NEA members disapprove...
...Mail to: NEW OXFORD REVIEW Room 263 1069 Kains Ave...
...But it was bad enough...
...After all, it "has credibility on face value...
...This union of more than a million members is a behemoth now quite set in its baleful ways...
...And not only does the union oppose sound proposals at the time of their initial airing when they are most publicized...
...This is not, of course, the first union in history of which this could be said...
...I'm definitely against it," said Bismarck teacher Esther Sipes...
...recommendations from various committees...
...But the NEA and its intertwined affiliates cast their spells in the state houses, where most serious matters of education policy are decided: whether to raise standards of achievement for students, whether teachers have to pass basic literacy tests, whether THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1987 33 good teachers should be paid more than bad ones...
...Catholics watched with a mixture of pity and amusement as the excellent Anglo-Catholic New Oxford Review argued and agonized itself into the [Roman] Catholic Church...
...So far as one can tell, the NEA's leadership neither reflects the views nor represents the interests of the association's members...
...We all know what a splendid form of instructional quality control those state licensure requirements are, consisting primarily of methods courses taken in colleges of education...
...Any such certification, the delegates made clear, would have to be voluntary—on the part of the teacher...
...Insisted that NEA members, to serve on the board that will confer those national certificates, must first undergo "training" at the hands of the NEA...
...If you want to recapture the excitement of when you first really believed, if you feel inundated by "bad news" about the Church, if you despair of all the moral laxity and doubt and dissension within filer portals but seek a remedy for that despair, or if you're searching for a "face" of Catholicism that is spiritually vibrant, solidly prolife, doctrinally sound, and socially engaged, it's time for you to subscribe to the NEW OXFORD REVIEW...
...American students, parents, voters, and taxpayers need better than they are getting from their largest association of educators...
...Please allow 2 to 8 weeks for delivery of first issue SPECIAL DISCOUNT RATES ^ One-year subscription $14 (regularly $19) ^ One-year student, unemployed, or retired person's subscription $12 (regularly $16) ^ Two-year subscription $23 (regularly $35) NAME (Please print or type) STREET ADDRESS CITY STATE ZIP CODE FOR FIRST-TIME SUBSCRIBERS 1:1 One-year Canadian or foreign subscription .. . . US$17 (regularly $22) Payment must be drawn in US Dollars ^ Sample copy Send coupon or letter...
...Less widely reported was that delegates received studies and pondered Chester E. Finn, Jr is assistant secretary for research and improvement in the Department of Education...
...Orthodox Catholics: DON'T DESPAIR...
...The "Standing Committee on Peace and International Relations," for example, urged increased efforts to "enhance member understanding of the operation, programs and value of the United Nations and its specialized agencies in achieving peace and improved quality of life throughout the world...
...Because the present reform move- ment is not "Potomacentric," there is not much opportunity (outside of presidential elections) for the NEA to make mischief for the whole country all at once...
...Endorsed the distribution of birth control devices by school clinics...
...The NEA, one recalls, has long fought testing teachers and students for knowledge and skills, too...
...T he convention could have been .1 worse...
...But now, a new wave of converts is entering the Church...
...Perhaps most brazen and least credible, the "Standing Committee on National Public Relations" asserted that "recognition of the Association as a positive force for quality education has increased," that "NEA's investment in advertising and public relations has returned big dividends," and that "efforts to heighten the positive image of the Association among the public and members should be continued and strengthened...
...Berkeley, CA 94706 PAYMENT MUST ACCOMPANY ORDER $3.50 34 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1987...
...Most of our writers are cradle Catholics and a significant minority belongs to various other churches...
...Jimmy Carter's obligation to the NEA for its endorsement in 1976 (the first year the association endorsed a presidential candidate) resulted in the Department of Education...
...But most American teachers are sensible folk who truly deserve better representation than they are getting from the NEA...
...And we cover the full range of issues of concern to today's reflective and believing Christian...
...And that the "mentor teacher" programs being installed in some states and localities, to scrutinize novices and offer them advice from veterans and to confer added status and pay on the best of those veterans, may be used "solely for the development of professional expertise," i.e., not for performance evaluation...
...But of course she is only a member, not a delegate...
...It's getting away from what they should be addressing...
...Resolution after resolution added rights and benefits, threw more issues into collective bargaining, narrowed the discretion and flexibility given to administrators and policy-makers, and sought to close loopholes whereby something the association dislikes might turn up with a different label...
...The forum for the new generation of converts is the NEW OXFORD REVIEW, a monthly magazine that takes its name from the 19th-century Oxford Movement in England...
...No, they are attracted by the Catholicism of the ages, the Magisterium, and the inspiring leadership of the current Pope...
...Delegates declined to urge that the United States provide "economic reconstruction" aid to the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua (but the union persists in its unyielding opposition to any aid to the contras...
...Among the committee's specific PR recommendations: a "class size offensive action plan" (sic) organized around the theme that "small classes lead to better education...
...Hence it modified its old anti-voucher resolution to incorporate opposition to "funding formulas that have the same effect as vouchers...
...Opposed mandatory AIDS testing for teachers and other school employees and also opposed drug-and-alcohol testing of students...
...Make check payable to NEW OXFORD REVIEW...
...it's optional, like everything else the NEA doesn't approve of but cannot defeat outright...
...For all its radical posturings on national and international issues, its fundamental by Chester E. Finn, Jr...
...NEA support for a candidate is not inconsequential...
...Indeed, save for what they read in the NEA's colorful, upbeat, and slightly puerile monthly magazine,' most members probably don't know a great deal about such things as resolutions passed, positions taken, legislation influenced, and candidates financed by their Association...
...AMONG THE EDUCATIONALOIDS A NEW AGE LOBBY UNREPENTANT ne might well have expected, as leaders of the National Education Association gathered in early July for its 125th annual meeting, that sheer self-interest would dictate a shift in the thinking that has guided it in recent years...
...The new converts are not attracted to the diluted Catholicism of the Hans Kungs, the Charles Currans, or those who sign ads favoring legal abortion...
...No longer, for example, are new teachers obliged to climb that ladder...
...I know a substantial number of recent converts like this and am much edified by their purity and ardour...
...Yet here is some of what the 8,000 delegates did in Los Angeles: •Rejected the idea that all new teachers should be obliged to hold the "national certificate" that a Carnegie-sponsored panel is now developing in order to foster higher standards and greater professionalism among teachers...
...it will relentlessly chip away at a policy long after it is underway and the public, presuming the change permanent, has turned to other matters...
...But the REVIEW isn't just for converts...
...Yet even now there are converts, of exceptionally high quality, and their number is increasing with the tenure of the present Pope...
...Those who relish these activities gravitate to conventions and board memberships, and thus end up making decisions on behalf of their far more numerous—and less radical—colleagues...
...What's NEA doing sticking its nose in those issues...
...Nary a Republican showed his face...
...to lobby for a degree-granting "peace academy" in lieu of the military academies...
...Though this proposition is "debated among 'experts' and education reformers," the committee acknowledged, the fact that it is surely unproved and quite possibly untrue ought not slow the initiative...
...One high school teacher, Tim Erhardt, for example, was concerned about "the direction the NEA is going...
...So the convention stipulated that national certification (even though voluntary) could not be used for salary differences...
...They come because at the highest level of Catholic teaching, the doctrine of the faith, though much embattled, remains uncompromised and is as fearlessly proclaimed by John Paul I I as by Peter, Paul, Ignatius, or Augustine...
Vol. 20 • October 1987 • No. 10
