By Ray Cardello for July 13, 2022 Season 11 / Post 47

I wrote about the NEA, National Education Association, just last week and its damaging influence on education, and worse, our children. With millions of members and their dues supporting far-left political issues and candidates, the NEA is more of a Political Action Committee than an entity concerned with your child’s education. The NEA says on their website that they focus more on transforming children and the country than improving math and science scores. They should be disbanded.

This week, the most prominent teacher’s union, the AFT, took its turn in the spotlight. The AFT, American Foundation of Teachers, represents over 1.7 million teachers. The following is their mission as stated on their website:

The American Federation of Teachers is a union of professionals that champions fairness; democracy; economic opportunity; and high-quality public education, healthcare and public services for our students, their families and our communities. We are committed to advancing these principles through community engagement, organizing, collective bargaining and political activism, and especially through the work our members do.

Like the NEA, the AFT is more of a PAC than a group concerned with the quality of education in America’s public schools. It is alarming that the head of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), Randi Weingarten, makes over half a million dollars per year in her job – more than nine times the average teacher’s salary in the U.S. In 2019, Weingarten received a salary of $489,844 along with $74,392 in other compensation, bringing her total haul for the year to $564,236, according to the AFT’s Internal Revenue Service Form 990 for that year, the most recent year available. 

The AFT has contributed nearly $9 million to various political causes and candidates in 2022. Almost all of the contributions are to Democrat candidates and left-leaning causes. The union knows where their bread is buttered.

This week, Weingarten commented that most union members believed the education system had become too politicized and was not allowing teachers to do their job. Wow, is that misdirection. The AFT and the NEA combine to form one of the largest lobbying groups in politics and were responsible for locking down many of our schools for nearly two years of the Pandemic. They held the government hostage for billions of dollars of COVID relief money, much of which will not be spent for years to come.

The teacher’s unions conspired with the Biden administration and the CDC to keep our kids in masks at school long after it was deemed unnecessary. They are already lobbying to mandate masks for the upcoming school year. They continue to promote Critical Race Theory and the 1619 Project even though parents across the country have argued against them as part of the curriculum.

The unions continue to push for sexual and gender studies in the early grades. The unions are wholly aligned with the indoctrination of our children that has been going on for generations. For union members to complain about politicizing the system is laughable.

Disbanding the teachers’ unions and the Department of Education would be the two most significant improvements to our education system in decades. Returning school control to the state level and encouraging more parental involvement would help to break this systematic indoctrination of our children and return a sense of respect and passion for our country.

It is not coincidental that both unions refer to transforming our country on their websites. We need more education and less transformation, and ending the reign of control of these two PACs disguised as trade unions would go a long way to that goal.