The NEA Grabs Power and Tax Dollars

The history of the NEA evolved through the work of some of the state teachers associations.    These state associations were comprised of a few “intellectuals” and socialists of the day.   In those days most of the classroom teachers were young, unmarried women.

    

There is a one room school, Hughes School, in our area.   I started a group to restore the building for the sake of history.  During the restoration process, I interviewed a woman who had taught at that school.    She said that the teacher could not be married, received little pay, lived and boarded with a family in the area.   

She taught eight grades in one room.   They had a coal stove to heat the room.   All of the children brought their own lunch “pail.”    She was required to be proper in every way.   Any hint of impropriety would cause her to lose her job.  The younger children learned even more than their own lessons because they listened to the recitations of the older students.   The older students had to help the younger students.  They also were responsible for helping the teacher by bringing in coal for the fire, cleaning the blackboard and making sure the room was clean.

The facts of how real education was taking place in this nation had very little to do with the provocateurs in the colleges and political groups of the day.  The private schools and the “one room schoolhouses” were reflective of the communities values and people.

In 1857 the presidents of ten state teachers associations met in Philadelphia.   The president of the New York Teachers Association, Thomas Valentine was the leader.   His goal was to promote the interests of all of teachers in the nation.  He said, “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.”

The goal of the group was complete control of education in the nation.  Their ideal was the Prussian system which was national and centralized.

Originally the organization only included men.  In 1866 membership was allowed for women.   In 1870 the name was changed from the National Teachers Association to National Educational Association.

In 1849 New York state passed a law taxing the citizens to support public education.    Many people petitioned the government to repeal that “unjust” law.  As in today’s government, the representatives did not pay attention to the people.    The taxes for education kept increasing so that by 1905, 22% of all public spending would be paying for public education.

The NEA was determined to control all education with government schools.  They did everything possible to destroy private schools.   They recruited teachers and administrators from private schools with a promise of a “government” job and all of those benefits.

It had been the private schools which provided a well-educated and well-behaved citizens.  Most of their graduates went on to college and into the professions.   The NEA preferred the state institutional atmosphere, much like the prisons and other public buildings.  Public education moved from the community values to the values of the members of the NEA.

These values were reflective and dominated by Harvard University.   Harvard was the seat of atheists, socialists, Unitarians, Hegelians and Humanists of all stripes.   Their goal was to remove any sense of religion from “public” education.    Unfortunately, the religious leaders compromised with these NEA leaders.   Compromise seems to be a tactic that is still used today. 

Government tax money is almost always the incentive for compromise.

Government is never neutral.  There are always “sides” on every issue.  The side of “secularism” was the side that won the war on public education.  Because the funds were only given to the secularist schools, American schools became the seat of “atheism.”

The leaders of the NEA were those that were most committed to secularism and statism.   These were the foundations of the establishment of public schools.   Parental rights and freedoms had to be surrendered.   The greater importance of the state was to be the primary consideration.

Even at the original conventions of the NEA, the platforms were that their issues were important to civilization and to the survival of our nation.   Read again the platform issues of the recent NEA convention.   All are for political issues and none are for creating an honorable and literate nation.