What Does the National Education Association Have to Do With Education?
Fresh off its largely successful efforts to keep millions of American kids out of classrooms for a year, the National Education Association is striking another blow against the nations education. Many readers may view the countrys largest teachers union as a highly politicized and partisan activist group. Its hard to argue the point when consulting the lobbying and campaign finance data on the website of OpenSecrets.org. Of the millions of dollars categorized as independent expenditures by NEA or affiliates in 2020, every single nickel went to supporting activities described by OpenSecrets as either Against Republicans or For Democrats.  But the union is not just favoring Democratsits pushing them leftward. At its recent convention, the NEA adopted a resolution containing a to-do list that could have been drafted by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.). The first objective listed in the policy reads:  Share and publicize, through existing channels, information already available on critical race theory (CRT) -- what it is and what it is not; have a team of staffers for members who want to learn more and fight back against anti-CRT rhetoric; and share information with other NEA members as well as their community members. The document goes on to note that we oppose attempts to ban critical race theory and/or The 1619 Project and also pledges to join with Black Lives Matter at School and the Zinn Education Project to call for a national day of action to teach lessons about structural racism and oppression.  This column has noted the number of prominent historians flagging significant historical errors in the 1619 project. Christopher Rufo recently wrote in these pages making the case against critical race theory. Over the last year, people across the political spectrum have recognized the horrific cost resulting from the defund the police campaign promoted by the Black Lives Matter organization. The teachers union now seeking to further the involvement of the organization inspired by Howard Zinn in American education threatens to be almost as destructive for students nationwide. In a 2013 Journal op-ed, David Bobb described Zinns work:  The American system, he writes in A Peoples History, is the most ingenious system of control in world history. The founding fathers were self-serving elitists defined by guns and greed.  ... The patron saint of Occupy Wall Street, Zinn left behind a legacy of prepackaged answers for every problema methodology that progressive historian Michael Kazin characterized as better suited to a conspiracy-mongers website than to a work of scholarship.  Zinn wasnt leading a conspiracy to expand individual liberty. Noted Mr. Bobb:  Before Zinn launched his own teaching career, he became a member of the Communist Party in 1949 (according to FBI reports released three years ago), and worked in various front groups in New York City... In 2005, as a guest on Comedy Centrals The Daily Show, Zinn delivered his standard wholesale condemnation of America. Surprised by the unrelenting attack, host Jon Stewart gave the historian an opportunity to soften his criticism. We have made some improvements, the comedian asked, in our barbarity over three hundred years, I would say, no? Zinn denied there was any improvement. The falsity of Zinns position that there had been no improvement in America in three centuries was matched by his refusal to acknowledge the full horrors of communist dictatorships from Hanoi to Havana. In March 2005 the Associated Press reported:  About 200 intellectuals, activists and artists from Latin America and the U.S. issued a letter Monday urging the top U.N. human rights watchdog to choose Cubas side in an expected battle over the communist countrys rights record. A U.S.-backed resolution to condemn the islands record is usually presented at every spring meeting in Geneva of the U.N. Human Rights Commission, which opened Monday and was to run for six weeks through April 22. Yes, the same Howard Zinn who insisted in the 1960s that the government of North Vietnam was not directing the communist insurgency in the countrys south. ***  James Freeman is the co-author of The Cost: Trump, China and American Revival.  ***  Follow James Freeman on Twitter. Subscribe to the Best of the Web email. To suggest items, please email best@wsj.com. (Teresa Vozzo helps compile Best of the Web.) ***