The National Education Association is one of the most powerful unions in the United States, and with good reason. It represents the professional interests of 3.2 million teachers in the nation’s public schools, and, as the saying goes, the schoolhouse of one generation is the statehouse of the next generation. As important as pipe fitters, service employee unions, and other trades are to our nation’s well-being, their influence does not begin to match the impact of the men and women who introduce our children to the world through academic instruction.

That is why it is all the more important for the NEA to have a sense of the limits of its mandate and its mission. This week in Washington a group of NEA members brought to the fore again what has become a perennial sore subject: the NEA leadership’s commitment to a policy of “reproductive freedom” that has been read, with justice, to signal support for abortion on request.

These NEA members, like Bill Pawson of New Jersey and Jill Bruns of Ohio, are not asking the NEA to do a 180 and endorse a human life amendment to the U.S. Constitution. They are not asking the NEA to embrace the Republican platform. On the contrary, they are asking for the NEA to recognize both the diversity of the views of its own membership and the diversity of the views of the parents and families who form its client base in the nation’s schools.

As interesting as it may be to know where my plumber and his union stand on intelligent design, I really care only whether he has an intelligent design for my sink trap. As curious as I might be at some level about my electrician’s official views on the NASA budget, I am really focused on whether his work will not cause my house to burn down. It is no less incongruous for our nation’s professionals in mathematics, grammar, chemistry, and debate to insist that their work requires them to take politic sides on a non-academic question.

Many of our most intense controversies today result from unwarranted and divisive agendas. The NEA leadership has created its own abortion dilemma by embracing an issue far removed from collective bargaining and professional development concerns. Back in August of 1990, the AFL-CIO rejected a move by some of its members to endorse legal abortion and decided to stay neutral. It was wise to do so. Today more and more NEA member teachers are asking for the same display of wisdom on one of the most challenging issues of our time. They deserve to be heard and heeded.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 7th, 2008 at 10:19 am and is filed under Politics .