With the hashtag \u201c#TeachTruth,\u201d the National Education Association (NEA) demanded the \u201cfreedom to teach\u201d and the \u201cfreedom to learn\u201d at their annual Representative Assembly earlier this month. It is laughable that the representatives and leaders of the world\u2019s largest teachers union are masquerading as champions of freedom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These are the same union bosses who forcefully compel teachers to fork over a part of their paychecks in the form of dues, which they, in turn, funnel to Democrat political campaigns. The Democrat lawmakers then drive agendas centered on big government control, mandates, endless regulations, and censorship \u2014 all of which are far from the freedom the NEA claims to espouse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The NEA\u2019s new slogan is a part of its rebrand effort, which comes on the heels of its multi-year effort to keep schools closed during the pandemic. They took \u201cthe freedom to learn\u201d from children and held them hostage while they made absurd, unrelated political demands, including defunding the police.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The NEA was also an advocate for vaccine mandates, which were required in some public school districts for staff and children to be allowed to return to their school, despite the plethora of data available by the late spring and early summer of 2020 revealing that children were at very low risk of serious cases of COVID-19 and that schools were not the super-spreader sites they had been made out to be. In short, the teachers unions did all they could to rob educators of the \u201cfreedom to teach\u201d in their natural environment and students of the freedom to return to their classrooms to learn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This abuse of teachers\u2019 and students\u2019 freedom is an ongoing practice in America\u2019s K-12 public schools, thanks to the teachers unions. For example, looking at curriculum, teaching is now often restricted to leftist viewpoints that clash with historical facts and biological realities. Educators are told to instead push upon the young and impressionable captive audience of children and adolescents their personal and union-fed political propaganda. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Teachers who support such indoctrination get away with this malfeasance because there is little accountability regarding what they teach. Their union member status ensures job security regardless of their professional performance or the violation of school policies. Furthermore, not only do these teachers know they can\u2019t get fired, but they also have a built-in salary increase each year, reinforcing the lack of responsibility for student academic learning in their classrooms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite the best efforts of the teachers unions to thwart them, the recent historic passage of universal or near-universal education savings accounts and private school vouchers in Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Ohio, Oklahoma, Utah, and West Virginia proves that the freedom to teach and learn is possible in K-12 education \u2014 but only when the teachers unions are no longer in control. <\/p>Keri D. Ingraham<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n The lack of accountability is dramatically clear by video footage<\/a> from an outdoor rally on the third day of the NEA\u2019s assembly, posted to the NEA\u2019s Instagram page, showing teachers holding signs that read, \u201cKeep your nose out of my classroom.\u201d This attitude contrasts starkly with what is found at most private schools, which seek to partner with parents and provide a high level of curriculum transparency and accountability for student learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The NEA video also featured a massive banner held by its members that featured the transgender pride flag and the words, \u201cREAD BANNED BOOKS.\u201d Without question, the NEA\u2019s agenda is to control public education and push radical, hypersexualized content on children despite some of the content being so sexually-explicit that it\u2019s been deemed classroom- and age-inappropriate by policymakers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not to be outdone, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the nation\u2019s second largest teachers union with the infamous Randi Weingarten at its helm, held its annual conference<\/a> this weekend in Washington, D.C. There were numerous woke-themed sessions <\/a>held during the conference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n