Sunday, July 08, 2007

Pro-Lifers Make Impact at NEA Teacher Convention - Some Delegates 'Shocked'

Seventy-five pro-life teachers, parents/taxpayers and children/students successfully picketed the NEA convention in Philadelphia on Sunday, July 1. Aged eight to eighty, they took positions on all four corners of Arch & 11th Streets, displaying high-visibility signs and posters easily seen by thousands of NEA Delegates disembarking from shuttle buses or entering and leaving the Convention Center's doorways. Pro-lifers and delegates were interviewed by reporters and photojournalists from FOX, Philadelphia Bulletin, Washington Times, Catholic Standard & Times, etc.

Many delegates openly expressed disbelief, skepticism, and even shock, at the revelation that NEA was involved in abortion at all - much less in an advocacy role - much less pro-abortion. They were totally unaware of NEA's long-standing "Family Planning Resolution" supporting "reproductive freedom" and "all methods of family planning" - including abortion. Some refused to accept the well-documented fact that NEA is one of Planned Parenthood's primary advocates and actually co-sponsored huge pro-abortion rallies in Washington in April 2004, April 1992, and November 1989.

A few belligerent delegates verbally berated the pro-lifers, accusing them of "lying". Others thanked pro-lifers for bringing NEA's abortion activism into sharp focus. Some said they would raise the issue on the Convention Floor and attempt to have NEA totally abandon its pro-abortion agenda and activism.

Bob Pawson, National Coordinator of PLEAS and NJEA member, said, "We joined NEA for collective bargaining representation; not to be misrepresented on socio-political or moral issues like abortion, homosexuality, or who to vote for. Respect the diversity of 3.2 million members. Totally disengage NEA from the abortion issue. Become truly neutral and completely non-involved."

"The NEA leadership's pro-abortion agenda is a perverse way of supposedly protecting our jobs. Babies are our business; our only business. For NEA to condone, much less promote, killing babies in their wombs is not only a moral outrage; it's economic suicide. Abortion costs us our jobs." NEA wants us unified for contract negotiations every few years, yet simultaneously divides us with radical, far left, extremist positions on issues like abortion. News flash: We don't feel unified. We feel betrayed. We resent having our dues monies used to subvert our personal moral values, and then being offered "thirty pieces of silver." "I urge pro-life NEA members across America to run for union offices at all levels, including Convention Delegate. Take back our union. Join the NEA Reform Revolution."

Source





Raise British educational standards through increase in grammar schools, thinktank urges

More grammar schools [i.e. academically-oriented schools that select on the basis of scholastic ability] and low-cost private schools are needed to raise the "dire" standards of the education system, a report by one of the most respected economic think-tanks says today. Millions of people cannot read, write or count and millions more can barely do so because of the "socialist" state-directed system and comprehensive education, the Economic Research Council says.

Better off parents have escaped the worst aspects of comprehensive education by paying private fees, buying tuition or moving home to be close to the best schools, says the report. It is families on the lowest incomes that have suffered from the progressive theories and dumbing down of standards.

The Economic Research Council, Britain's oldest economic think-tank, says it is "rotten schooling" and not grammar schools that has harmed social mobility. Prof Dennis O'Keeffe, the report's author, says leading Tories who claim grammar schools no longer offer a ladder of opportunity for poor, bright children fail to understand the importance of selection. "Unlike David Cameron's parents who sent him to Eton, certain members of the modern Conservative Party appear not to understand the dramatically effective way competitive education encourages, identifies and rewards talent and consequently increases social mobility," he says.

"Comprehensive schools with soft and easy access for all have not served the community well. They have served only to eradicate upward mobility, and done so, perversely, in the name of eradicating privilege," adds Prof O'Keeffe, the professor of social science at Buckingham University.

Mr Cameron has pledged to preserve the existing 164 grammars but backed David Willetts, the shadow education secretary, when he blamed the schools for entrenching social advantage. In a speech last month that led to a rebellion in the Tory ranks, Mr Willetts said that changes in society since the 1950s meant that the middle classes now monopolised grammar school places.

Prof O'Keeffe wants the law to be changed so that education authorities can choose to re-introduce the 11-plus or provide more academically selective schools. "Today's comprehensive schools claim to eradicate privilege, but in reality they have only eradicated upward mobility," he says. An education elite in the Civil Service, universities and teacher training colleges had pushed ideas of "children thinking for themselves and owning the curriculum" as part of "socialist control" of the state system.

To help break down the monopoly system, there should be more cheap, private schools and tax relief on the fees.

Mr Willetts said last night: "One of the reasons for shockingly low social mobility is that it is very hard for someone from a modest background to get into our academically most successful schools. That is why we are proposing real reforms so that there are more good schools with more streaming and setting and tough discipline."

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"


For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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