BY aL BENSON JR. | JANUARY 11, 2012
Major function for teacher union is to socialize students
Public education has become Socialists' primary instrument to promote Socialism.
The National Education Association (NEA) meets every year for a big national convention and teachers from all over the country show up for this event.
An agenda is usually presented showing all the things nationally that the NEA is either for or against. Many of the issues they choose to address have little or nothing to do with education, but everything to do with their leftist worldview.
While many have heard of the NEA, they don't have any idea of how long it has been around or what it really does, only that many of their kids' teachers belong to it. The compliant media, when it reports on NEA conventions, is not about to give out any more real information than it has to. In all fairness to public school teachers, there are some that are not in favor of what this "teachers union" does, but their opposition is generally ignored or ridiculed.
Samuel Blumenfeld in his informative book "NEA, Trojan Horse in American Education" has given us a view of the NEA that is seldom presented in other places.
Blumenfeld noted on page 13 of his book that it was in 1829 that Josiah Holbrook launched the Lyceum movement to organize the educators of America into a powerful lobby for public education. And if the socialists decided to further their cause through the instrument of public education, we can then understand why the system has had such a pro-socialist bias for as long as anyone can remember. Indeed, public education was to become the socialists' primary instrument for promoting socialism."
Also in 1829, radical socialist and feminist Frances Wright lectured in this country. She spoke in favor of a national system of education -- and who was to be the beneficiary of that system? The students? Hardly! In speaking of public education, Ms. Wright said quite forthrightly "That measure is national, rational, republican education, free for all at the expense of all; conducted under the guardianship of the state, at the expense of the state, for the honor, the happiness, the virtue, the salvation of the state."
That's quite a mouthful of socialist dogma. Karl Marx would have loved it. Maybe he did. Frances Wright, after all, was a little ahead of him in promoting "Free education for all children in public schools." Remember now, we are talking about events that happened in 1829 -- not 1929, but 1829 -- a mere forty-two years after the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.
Blumenfeld has informed us that: "The NEA was founded in 1857 at a meeting in Philadelphia called by the presidents of ten state teachers associations."
Thomas W. Valentine, president of the New York Teachers Association, told the gathering, "I trust the time will come when our government will have its educational department, just as it now has one for agriculture, for the interior, for the navy, etc."
Blumenfeld continued: "Thus it should come as no surprise that the call for a federal department of education was made at the very first organizational meeting." The socialists didn't get what they wanted right away, but they never quit working toward it and planning for it. Jimmy Carter finally gave it to them during his one-term presidency in the late 1970s as a payback for teacher union support during his election. Ronald Reagan claimed he wanted to disband it, but, somehow, he never quite got around to it.
Trouble is, the Constitution, as flawed as it is, gave the federal government absolutely NO role to play in education in this country, so the feds just usurped the power and did it anyway. Few people dared to complain. After all, it was "for the kids" right? Well, not exactly. Originally the organization was called the National Teachers Association but, according to Blumenfeld, in 1870 the name was changed to the National Education Association and membership was opened to include"any person in any way connected with the work of education."
Shortly, the NEA became the "forum" where all the educational issues of the day were dealt with such as public vs.private education, the role of government in education, religious educations vs. secular (humanist) education and others. And Blumenfeld has noted that these problems remain with us even today "just as insoluble now as they were then."
As you dig further into the socialist origins of both the public school system and the National Education Association, you learn more and more about the socialist direction public education has always taken in this country -- if you are willing to look.
Many of you have heard of John Dewey, one of the giants of public education in the 20th century. His name is to 20th century public education what Horace Mann's name was to 19th century public education. John Dewey was an atheist, a socialist, and just happened to belong to fifteen different Marxist front organizations, as well as being a co-author of the Humanist Manifesto. Dewey had an "interesting" education philosophy which should give parents no comfort. He said: "You can't make socialists out of individualists. Children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society, which is coming, where everyone is interdependent."
Look at what he said. With a statement like that do you wonder why the minions of both the NEA and the government school system hate homeschoolers so much? Most homeschoolers learn to think independently, at least to some degree. Therefore, they will ask questions; they will even question authority where they feel it is right to do so. So they won't fit easily into the socialist collective that public education and big government are planning for us. They will not go easily into the New World Order, but will question and resist -- therefore they must be suppressed at every opportunity that the "socialist collective" may flourish.
Back in 1936 the NEA stated a position from which it has never retreated. It said: "We stand for socializing the individual . . . The major function of the school is the social orientation of the individual . . . Education must operate according to a well-formulated social policy."
Notice that this statement did not say that education was a major function of the public school. because it never has been, but rather"social orientation." That statement alone should tell you what the public school system is really all about, and folks, it ain't education! Paul Haubner, an NEA specialist, has informed us that "The schools cannot allow parents to influence the kinds of values-education their children receive in school . . . that is what is wrong with those who say there is a universal system of values. Our goals are incompatible with theirs. We must change their values." Christian ideals are not in line with what the schools have for an agenda and so must be put down in whatever way possible.
I hope you have noticed that, through all of this, there is almost no emphasis on real education, but every emphasis on changing the values of the students away from what their parents have taught them.