HERE'S A SET OF RESOLUTIONS THAT SHOULD BE IGNORED

Saturday, January 3, 2004

Since you're probably all thinking about New Year's resolutions anyway, I thought I might assuage your guilt at having already broken them by sharing with you a few of the ambitious resolutions of the National Education Association. They're actually passed every year at the summer convention, but no matter, they're evergreen. Indeed, some of them, such as support for a nuclear freeze, have been around for decades.

"Nuclear freeze?" you may well wonder. What is a teachers' union doing passing resolutions on foreign policy? Why, it's because the NEA believes that "nuclear war is not survivable" and so we shouldn't have one.

Indeed we shouldn't, and I suspect there wouldn't be much support among NEA members for the opposite view. But the same can't be said for some of their other forays into foreign policy.

"The Association also urges the U.S. government to refrain from any plan for overt or covert action that would destabilize or overthrow any government or would adversely affect a government's successful campaign to improve literacy, equal education support, health care, and living and working conditions."

Remember, this was passed in July. So the NEA believes the U.S. government should have left the Taliban in power in Afghanistan, and Saddam Hussein in Baghdad? Of course there are people who do believe that, and some of them are NEA members, but it seems unlikely that the sentiment is sufficiently widespread among the membership to justify adopting it as the group's official position.

The NEA also supports the "Reparation of Native American Remains," according to the title of one resolution. What, repatriation isn't enough?

I guess we can forgive the people who vote on these things for not having read all of them carefully. There are 320 resolutions, many of them having multiple parts, adding up to more than 46,000 words. And most of them do deal with education, which is appropriate. Unfortunately, a lot of them are misguided. They are devoted more to describing desirable gold-plated compensation packages for union members while protecting them from individual accountability than they are with providing the kind of education parents want for their children.

For instance, one resolution proclaims, "the focus of the accountability system must be on the school, not on individual stakeholders, as the unit for evaluation and improvement of student learning." And if the school has some "individual stakeholders" who happen to be dreadful teachers? Mustn't look there for improvement.

Please note that saying there are some people teaching who shouldn't be does not indict the entire profession. Nor are teachers as a whole to be blamed for the nonsense the NEA resolves every year in their name.

There is a long list of words followed by "education" that every child should have: multicultural, global, foreign/world language, school-to-work/career, vocational/technical, fine arts, physical, family life, sex, HIV/AIDS, lifesaving techniques, environmental, democracy and citizenship, and labor movement. I'm sure, given that last, that I needn't belabor the point that all of these have a discernible political slant.

Mathematics education rates mention, however, only in the context that it ought to be "gender-free and culturally unbiased."

Left-handers do get their own resolution, though. It recommends that they should have desks and scissors and whatever else they need to "achieve on an equal basis with right-handed students." And it strongly recommends "preservice preparation and staff development" that present "strategies for handwriting instruction to left-handed students."

I ought to be sympathetic to that, being left-handed and moreover having fought and won a major battle with my second-grade teacher over which way I should slant my paper so I could write without twisting my hand and arm. But you know what? That's all the "strategy" anyone needs to write comfortably left-handed. If something can be explained in one sentence - align the paper with the writer's forearm - how much staff development can be needed?

The NEA does not favor charter schools, except when they are hobbled by the same kind of red tape that makes them necessary. And they oppose letting parents choose home schooling, ostensibly because it "cannot provide the student with a comprehensive education experience."

That is demonstrably untrue. Given the success of home-schooled children in college, they are far better educated on average than the products of the public schools. So you have to think that the number of potential NEA members created if a million kids went back to classrooms (with no more than 15 students each, another recommendation) and the dues they would pay has something to do with the official opinion on this matter.

But the NEA, having failed to stop the growth of home schooling, still hopes to cripple it. "When home schooling occurs, students enrolled must meet all state requirements. Home schooling should be limited to the children of the immediate family, with all expenses being borne by the parents/guardians. Instruction should be by persons who are licensed by the appropriate state education licensure agency, and a curriculum approved by the state department of education should be used.

"The Association also believes that home-schooled students should not participate in any extracurricular activities in the public schools."

That will certainly help to make their education more comprehensive, won't it? There could hardly be a clearer indication of the NEA's true priorities.