Membership training for the National Education Association (NEA), America’s largest teachers’ union, makes the organization’s priorities unmistakably clear.
Defending Education, a watchdog group, recently obtained pre-attendance and participant materials for the NEA’s training session, “Advancing LGBTQ+ Justice,” which begins today. The documents, considered alongside other union programming, reveal the NEA’s fixation on identity politics.
The pre-attendance materials put the training’s absurdity on full display. On the document’s second page, the NEA lists a series of principles that it expects attendees to accept. Among them are “Listening for Understanding,” “Being Gracious,” “Staying Engaged,” and “Saying ‘I’—tell your truth.” Is this program for adults or kindergartners?
Then, on the seven pages that follow, the NEA recounts “key terms” about “sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression.” The list begins with “agender” and ends with “Two-Spirit”—an identity that non-Natives are instructed not to use. (Of course, males may identify and insist on being treated as females.) All of this is before one gets to the 56-page participant handout, which features pronoun-use instructions and oppression flowcharts.
These materials would be comical if they weren’t being used for a meeting of the nation’s largest teachers’ union.