Cradle of Unreason

NEA: Trojan Horse in American Education

The Game Plan

A Review by Jean Carpenter

In 1967, the NEA pro-claimed:

NEA will become a political power second to no other special interest group ...NEA will organize this profession from top to bottom into logical operational units that can move swiftly and effectively and with power unmatched by any other organized group in the nation.
-- Sam Lambert, NEA president, in his inaugural address, 1966, NEA, The Trojan Horse in American Education, by Samuel Blumenfeld, p. 161

Today that prediction is a reality. The 1.7-million-member NEA is the most politically powerful organization in the United Sates. In Trojan Horse in American Education, Samuel L. Blumenfeld, educator and publisher, now full time writer, provides the historical background, tracing it to a very important event that occurred in 1805, that enables the reader to know how we became a "nation at risk."

This book is a careful, but powerful and thoroughly documented, expose of the NEAÕs game plan. It doesnÕt leave the reader wringing his hands, however, but reveals an escape.

In his introduction he points out what should be obvious to anyone who thought about it: if private schools were not successful in their efforts to educate, and at the same time cost-effective, they would simply go out of business. Not so with government schools. They simply blame their failure on lack of money, and we give them more. The result is that we pay more and more for nothing short of academic disaster.

For local communities to pay tuition for poor children to attend existing private schools would even from the beginning have been more economical than to establish tax-funded schools. Thus it is readily apparent that economics was never the problem. The problem was philosophical and political.

...the American form of limited government with its elaborate checks and balances had been created on the basis of the Calvinist distrust of human nature....

...to explain why man does the evil things he does, they turned from theology to psychology.
-- ibid., p. 14

When a nation's teachers' colleges become the main vehicle for the advancement of a philosophy, that philosophy will soon infect the whole of society. John Dewey began the promulgation of a new religion, that of Secular Humanism, in which humanity is venerated instead of God. This religion, taught in our schools, is now the established national religion, in defiance of the Constitution.

If you, as a parent, have wondered why Johnny can't read, the answer might be found in the philosophy of Dewey. To his way of thinking the greatest enemy was the private consciousness seeking knowledge and exercising judgment.

The mere absorbing of facts and truths is so exclusively individual an affair that it tends very naturally to pass into selfishness. There is no obvious social motive for the acquirement of mere learning, there is no clear social gain in success thereat.
-- Dewey, School and Society, 1899, ibid., p. 105

The public has never really been fully aware of Dewey's intense hatred of individualism and his attempt to destroy it. According to Max Eastman "Dewey concealed the dynamite of his educational theories in a pile of dry hay." But his view might be summed up in this line...

The last stand of oligarchical and anti-social seclusion is perpetuation of this purely individualistic notion of intelligence.
-- John Dewey, Liberalism and Social Action, 1935, ibid., p. 106

The goal, then, was to produce inferior readers with inferior thinking skills dependent on an educational elite for guidance, wisdom and control -- as witness this extolling of illiteracy by one of Dewey's gangÉ

Very many men have lived and died and been great, even leaders of their age, without any acquaintance with letters. The knowledge which illiterates acquire is probably on the whole more personal, direct, environmental and probably a much larger proportion of it practical. Moreover, they escape much eyestrain and mental excitement, and, other things being equal, are probably more active and less sedentary. It is possible, despite the stigma our bepedagogued age puts upon this disability, for those who are under it not only to lead a useful, happy, virtuous life, but to be really well educated in many other ways. Illiterates escape certain temptations, such as vacuous and vicious reading. Perhaps we are prone to put too high a value both upon the ability required to attain this art and the discipline involved in doing so, as well as the culture value that comes to the citizen with his average of only six grades of schooling by the acquisition of this art.
-- G. Stanley Hall, 1908, ibid., p. 107

When the teachers of our teachers keep hammering away that the development of literacy in children is neither important nor socially desirable, and give them a teaching tool designed to guarantee they won 't learn to read, what else could one expect to come from the schools, but illiterates?

And what was that teaching tool? James Cattell had conducted experiments in Germany that provided a "scientific basis" for the new method... He had observed that adults could read whole words almost as fast as they could read individual letters, and deduced from this that a child could be taught to read by showing him whole words and telling him what they said -- look-say. This method, of course, limits the vocabulary to learned words, while any child with a knowledge of phonics can read words he has never seen before.

In spite of its name, the interest of the NEA's leaders in education falls far below their interest in achieving radical political and social ends. Their goal is to control Congress, the fifty state legislatures, the Democrat Party, the curriculum in all the schools, public and private, and the entire teaching profession.

Another basic principle must be found and accepted. This we have enunciated in the following: "The state maintains free public education to perpetuate itself and to promote its own interests. Free public education is a long-term investment that the state may be a better place in which to live and in which to make a living."

This implies that education of the future will be concerned with the welfare and progress of the individual only as the welfare and progress of the individual contributes to the welfare and progress of society ...

Only education which seeks the reconstruction of society is consistent with and capable of realizing and perpetuating the fundamental principles of democracy...
-- Thomas H. Briggs, setting forth the program of NEA's Committee on the Orientation of Secondary Education, NEA Journal, March 1937, ibid., p. 142

As for the direction that the "reconstruction of society" should take, they have never minced words that theirs is a totalitarian socialist agenda.

Mr. Blumenfeld chronicles the NEA's rise to political power with the leadersÕ own words.

Education is one of the most thoroughly political enterprises in American life. More public money is spent for education than for any other single function of state and local government.
-- Stephen K. Bailey, in the November 1964 Journal, ibid., p. 159

"Teacher in Politics" weekend training workshops all across the country in 1964 taught teachers how to win local school-bond elections, to elect candidates to school boards and local office, and to mobilize local groups to support NEA objectives.

NEA will become a stronger and more influential advocate of social changes long overdue ...

NEA will become a political power second to no other special interest group ...

NEA will have more and more to say about how a teacher is educated, whether he should be admitted to the profession, and depending on his behavior and ability whether he should stay in the profession ...

And, finally, NEA will organize this profession from top to bottom into logical operating units that can move easily and effectively and with power unmatched by any other organized group.
-- Sam Lambert, NEA president, in his inaugural address, 1966, ibid., p. 161

In 1969 the NEA won victory "its first time at bat" in the national arena. After all Senators were notified of NEA opposition to President NixonÕs nominations of Judges Clement Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell to the U.S. Supreme Court, the nominations were withdrawn.

Whether we like it or not we're getting into a lobby-mad, power-mad world. We are realistic enough to know that the great lobbies have power, and that if weÕre going to get a share of the pie, we'd better move in alongside of them.
-- George Fischer, NEA President, 1970, ibid., p. 164

Our first major objective, politically and legislatively, will be to reverse the national leadership in Washington and put a friend of education in the White House and more friends of education in Congress.

We will initiate a grass roots campaign that will bring about the victories that we must have in 1976, and if that means building a war chest to get friends of education elected -- then we need to keep the old lid open and continue to plunk in the money.

One thing is certain - - the NEA will never again sit out a national election.

In fact, we will build NEA's political force over the next two years to the point where the Presidential candidates will seek NEA endorsement.
-- Helen Wise, NEA President, 1973, ibid., p. 166, 167

In 1976 NEA-PAC scored an 83% win record in Congress and was a major factor in delivering Jimmy Carter to the White House. In 1979 Carter rewarded them with the Department of Education Ñ with cabinet status.

The change-agent teacher does more than dream, however; he builds, too. He is part of an association of colleagues in his local school system, in his state, and across the country that makes up an interlocking system of change-agent organizations. This kind of system is necessary because changing our society through the evolutionary educational processes requires simultaneous action on three power levels.
-- TodayÕs Education, September 1970, ibid., p. 167

History tells us that virtually every educational decision is a political decision ...

Teachers are 2 million strong, and any politician who can count knows how much power an active, determined group of that size can generate ... But I believe that our efforts in the political arena must move swiftly to a new dimension: activity by each and every one of us within the party system to help assure that education is a top priority in party platforms and that pro-education candidates are nominated.
-- Helen Wise, NEA President, in Today's Education, Jan. - Feb. 1974, ibid., p. 169

In that same issue of their magazine the NEA was lauded by two liberal Congressmen for its help in their election. Senator Claiborne Pell, of Rhode Island, had been an underdog. He attributed his win by 33,000 votes to an army of teachers knocking on doors.

By 1980 the NEA had 302 delegates and 162 alternates at the Democratic National Convention. However, dissent was beginning to be expressed among the membership.

We're extremely annoyed about the cover and the editorial "Carter-Mondale Ñ A Clear-Cut Choice" (Nov.-Dec.). For many of us, the Carter-Mondale ticket was not a clear-cut choice. No intelligent voter votes for a President on his education record alone.
-- TodayÕs Education, Feb. - Mar. 1981,ibid., p. 173

Many teachers are not fooled. Dissident teachers, however, are ignored, branded as reactionaries, denied promotions, or forced out. Experienced, tenured teachers have been fired for refusing to join the union or pay its fees (for collective bargaining).

No NEA affiliate has ever been willing to open its books so that teachers could see how much of their fees actually went to pay for the costs of collective bargaining. ibid., p. 207

How can teachers so dominated by others teach children how to stand tall and live free?

All of this political involvement has done nothing for the quality of education.

There's no alternative to political involvement. Instruction and professional development have been on the back burner for us, compared to political action.
-- Mary Futrell, President of the NEA, Los Angeles Times, July 4, 1982, ibid., p. 209

The replacement of efficient, successful private schools with wasteful, counter-effective public education was undoubtedly one of the biggest mistakes this nation ever made. But the NEAÕs leaders are not content. They are now trying to cut off escape routes by pressuring for regulation of private schools and abolishing of home schools.

The NEA is working toward achieving monopoly, using at least seven concurrent strategies:

(1) teacher certification and teacherÕs college accreditation;

(2) labor union

(3) religious humanist curriculum;

(4) PACÕs and candidate endorsement;

(5) government agencies;

(6) legislation; and

(7) federal funding. The most important one is curriculum, which follows the tenets of what is a new religion, by their own declaration in the Humanist Manifesto signed by Dewey and 33 others in 1933...

And what is that new religion?

Religious humanists regard the universe as self-existing and not created.
-- Humanist Manifesto, ibid., p. 226

The goal of secular humanism is world government.

We affirm a set of common principles that can serve as a basis for united action ... They are a design for a secular society on a planetary scale.
-- Humanist Manifesto II, ibid., p. 228

So we see that the public schools have not failed after all. They have achieved their declared goal of producing inferior readers with inferior thinking skills. And they have done it with our money -- to our children.

The blame lies at our own doorstep -- and so does the remedy. The good news is that an escape route remains open.

To continue: One By One
The Power of One