Teachers Unions Go Woke

(Wall Street Journal)

The following is a quick and dirty extract with emphases of an editorial appearing recently in the WSJ.  It presents a comprehensive summary of the role teacher unions are actively pushing in order to promote so-called Critical Race Theory in our public schools.

The Teachers Unions Go Woke

(WSJ editorial July 8, 2021

Witness the way the national teachers unions are adopting woke values and pressing them into K-12 curriculums across the U.S.

The NEA ...calls for the union to support and lead campaigns that “result in increasing the implementation of culturally responsive education, critical race theory, and ethnic ... Studies curriculum in pre- K-12 and higher education.”

Critical theory is a neo-Marxist ideology that is pervasive in higher education and teaches that a person is defined above all else by race, gender and sexual orientation, and that American institutions are designed to ensure white supremacy and “the patriarchy.”

[The NEA calls for the union to support and lead campaigns to:]

• lobby for “professional development around cultural responsiveness, implicit bias, anti-racism, trauma-informed practices, restorative justice practices and other racial justice trainings” for “all school employees.” The delegates called for similar training for students. Just what second-graders need: instruction on how to distrust kids with different skin colors.
•  issue a study criticizing “empire, white supremacy, anti-Blackness, anti-Indigeneity, racism, patriarchy, cisheteropatriarchy, capitalism, ableism, anthropocentrism, and other forms of power and oppression at the intersections of our society.”
• “join with Black Lives Matter at School and the Zinn Education Project” to hold a rally on George Floyd’s birthday, honor other victims of police violence, and promote “a national day of action to teach lessons about structural racism and oppression.” ....
• share resources for “decolonizing the curriculum” with educators to use in the classroom. The list goes on.

NEA ... represents three million educators nationwide. The delegates will return to their school districts as administrators, principals and teachers to spread this message of American oppression and “anti-Indigeneity.” ....

[U]nion leaders claim that parents who oppose any of this are motivated by hate and are assaulting free speech ... American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten claimed that “culture warriors are labeling any discussion of race, racism or discrimination as CRT to try to make it toxic” and “bullying teachers and trying to stop us from teaching students accurate history.”...

Loudoun County, Va., where five families sued last month over school district policies and practices that are rooted in critical race theory. The families claim that administrators chilled speech and discriminated against non-minority students. ....

All of this shows how far the teachers unions have strayed from their original mission of fighting for better pay and pensions. The NEA and AFT have become the ideological and institutional vanguard of progressive politics. ....

Voters need to understand the ideological motivations at work in these unions and how that will affect what their children and grandchildren are taught. Parents have every right, even a duty, to fight back against this invasion of progressive politics in their schools.

Original editorial:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-teachers-unions-go-woke-11625697757?st=294oeazmvmxugou&reflink=article_copyURL_share