New York Post | by NY Post Editorial Board | May 5, 2023
Don’t let them gaslight you: America’s teachers unions are moving to turn their profession from instruction into naked indoctrination.
Consider a late-April resolution passed by the Colorado Education Association (the state affiliate of the behemoth National Education Association): “CEA believes that capitalism requires exploitation of children, public schools, land, labor, and/or resources. Capitalism is in opposition to fully addressing systemic racism (the school to prison pipeline), climate change, patriarchy, (gender and LGBTQ disparities), education inequality, and income inequality.”
Got that? Capitalism (and thus America) bad; woke babble good.
Aside from the deeply mendacious content of the resolution — there’s no “solution” to climate change without massive, free-market-driven innovation, for example — the fact that a public-sector union, flush with taxpayer dollars, is attempting to radicalize the curriculum at all is absurd.
We only know about this thanks, reportedly, to a disgusted union member: the CEA had refused to disclose it.
No wonder!
This is as clear and ugly a statement of principles as can be imagined.
Note the absence of anything resembling actual education from it.
It’s also part of a nationwide effort by teachers unions to push leftist nonsense in place of actual instruction.
- The United Federation of Teachers scheduled a seminar aimed to help resist “the harmful effects of whiteness in our lives,” as part of the union’s continuing-education programs.
- The Virginia Education Association published in February a “toolkit” meant to teach kids — some as young as 5 — critical race theory.
And the lunacy clearly winds up in the classroom:
- A Vermont school district recently sought to create racially segregated “affinity groups” starting in 3rd grade. Indeed, that repugnant practice keeps popping up in schools across the nation.
- Seattle public schools push the doctrine that US schools commit “spirit murder” against black students, and are part of a “race-based white-supremist society.”
- A Philly elementary school had 5th graders do a mock “Free Angela Davis” rally.
These moves are undertaken in the name of “equity.”
But their perverse effect — as years of education data demonstrate — is to fail precisely those communities woke teachers claim to speak for.
And they give the lie, utterly, to the years-long effort undertaken by unions and schools to conceal what these curricular changes are really about.
So the next time a prog denies that teachers are using students as ideological canon fodder, point them to the loud, proud announcement from the CEA.
As the kids say: “When people tell you who they are, believe them.”
Source: Teachers unions and a lesson in capitalism-hatred (nypost.com)
