The NEA Is Selling Its Soul

From The American Thinker:

August 21, 2010


National Education Association Selling its Saul

By Bill Costello

The National Education Association (NEA), the U.S.'s largest labor union, is promoting communism to the millions of American public school teachers it represents. Teachers who are influenced by their union's efforts are more likely to indoctrinate American children into communism.





For the past several months, the NEA website has recommended that its members read books by communist sympathizer Saul Alinsky. And, for a time, the website listed October 1 as a day for teachers and students to celebrate the anniversary of the Communist takeover of China by Mao Zedong.





Saul Alinsky, who has been described by his biographer Sanford Horwitt as a "Communist fellow-traveler," wanted to transfer power from the so-called Haves to the so-called Have-nots and transform the U.S. into a communist state.





In his book, Rules for Radicals, Alinsky states, "A Marxist begins with his prime truth that all evils are caused by the exploitation of the proletariat by the capitalists. From this he logically proceeds to the revolution to end capitalism, then into the third stage of reorganization into a new social order of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and finally the last stage-the political paradise of communism."





Alinsky's amoral attitude extended beyond communist ideology; he completely rejected the Judeo-Christian principles America was founded on. He dedicated the first edition of Rules for Radicals to Lucifer: "Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins-or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom -- Lucifer."





On its website, the NEA continues to sell its Saul.





For a time, the website's "Diversity Events" page listed October 1 as a day for schools to celebrate the anniversary of the Communist takeover of China. However, that listing was removed shortly after it was criticized in a report by World Net Daily.





Here's a calendar listing the NEA should put on its website: On March 3, 1952, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a New York state law -- the Feinberg Law -- that barred communists from teaching in public schools. However, the NEA is more likely to celebrate the date the Supreme Court reversed itself in a subsequent case fifteen years later.





From coast to coast, news stories abound about communist indoctrination in U.S. schools. For example, the New York Times recently reported that a teacher working at Beacon High School in New York City had pictures of Che Guevara and Fidel Castro on the walls of his classroom, took students on a field trip to Cuba, and bluntly admitted to the school principal that he's a communist. And Fox News recently reported that students at Black Pine Circle School in Berkeley, California created a mosaic that included symbols of communism and a prediction that "capitalism will fail."





Students in California are sent home for wearing American flag T-shirts on Cinco de Mayo while students around the country are allowed to wear T-shirts with images of Che Guevara, the communist revolutionary and mass murderer.





American children are not being taught that Alinsky's "paradise of communism" has never shown up. They are not learning that the world's greatest famines and mass murders have occurred under communist regimes.





And the NEA wants to keep it that way.





The Center for American Progress, which received $110,000 from NEA, published a report recommending the elimination of several subjects from U.S. federal education programs, including "Academies for American History and Civics," "We the People," and "Excellence in Economic Education."





American history, civic education, and economic and financial literacy are the three most important subjects for producing an educated electorate -- and yet they are the very subjects at risk of being eliminated from primary and secondary public education.





Don't expect students to learn these subjects at the tertiary level; a study conducted by the nonprofit American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) found that both public and private universities are failing to require students to learn important subjects, especially American history, American government, and economics.





In a letter on ACTA's website, Former Harvard Dean Harry Lewis writes, "Many studies have shown that our college graduates are ignorant of the basic principles on which our government runs. For starters, most cannot identify the purpose of the First Amendment, what Reconstruction was, or the historical context of the Voting Rights Act."





However, if the NEA is successful in its pursuit to promote communism to the millions of American public school teachers it represents, then American children will at least be well-educated in the philosophy of Saul Alinsky and the importance of the anniversary of the Communist takeover of China by Mao Zedong. And that is the only history, civic education, and economic and financial literacy that seems to matter to the NEA.





Bill Costello, M.Ed., is the president of U.S.-based Making Minds Matter, LLC and the author of Awaken Your Birdbrain: Using Creativity to Get What You Want. He can be reached at www.makingmindsmatter.com.