Trouble for the NEA From the Academy

Somebody does love President Carter: the National Education Association, the most powerful and baldest-faced lobby in Washington. Nearly a tenth of the delegates to the Democratic National Convention were sent there through the influence of the NEA; and almost to a man/woman, they voted for J. Carter. Didn’t he give them their own new Department of Education?

The bosses of the NEA do not love Mr. Ronald Reagan; for that Enemy of Progress has made it clear that upon taking office he would recommend the abolishment of the tender Department of Education (whose budget already dwarfs that of long-established departments, although Education is in its salad days merely). Mr. Reagan, who happens to have read for a good many years this “From the Academy” page in national review, is keenly interested in improving the quality of American public instruction. That notion is anathema to the bosses of the NEA, for of course our public schools everywhere are perfect already. What the NEA lobbyists demand is more money—and more power for themselves.

RK

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Russell Kirk

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Somebody does love President Carter: the National Education Association, the most powerful and baldest-faced lobby in Washington. Nearly a tenth of the delegates to the Democratic National Convention were sent there through the influence of the NEA; and almost to a man/woman, they voted for J. Carter. Didn’t he give them their own new Department of Education?

The bosses of the NEA do not love Mr. Ronald Reagan; for that Enemy of Progress has made it clear that upon taking office he would recommend the abolishment of the tender Department of Education (whose budget already dwarfs that of long-established departments, although Education is in its salad days merely). Mr. Reagan, who happens to have read for a good many years this “From the Academy” page in national review, is keenly interested in improving the quality of American public instruction. That notion is anathema to the bosses of the NEA, for of course our public schools everywhere are perfect already. What the NEA lobbyists demand is more money—and more power for themselves.