Teachers unions make a litany of progressive policy demands for schools to reopen.
Eric Boehmwrites: As school districts across the country grapple with the question of how to safely and effectively educate students amid a pandemic, teachers unions are making increasingly ridiculous demands, some of which have nothing to do with the health or safety of students, teachers, or administrators.
Take the group United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA). That union represents more than 35,000 teachers in the nation’s second-largest school district. Earlier this month, UTLA published a paper calling for schools to remain closed until the district could ensure adequate supplies of protective gear for teachers and students. UTLA also demanded the reconfiguring of classrooms to allow for social distancing.
But that wasn’t it. UTLA also stated that the pandemic requires an immediate moratorium on new charter schools in Los Angeles. How does that protect student or teacher safety? It doesn’t, of course. If anything, the pandemic has revealed the necessity of additional educational options for parents and students.
[Eric Boehm, “Teachers Unions Want Wealth Taxes, Charter School Bans, and Medicare for All Before Schools Can Reopen,” Reason, July 28]
Idol smashing and cancel culture are part of a broad ideological project to dominate society. Andrew A. Michta writes: Critical race theory—the academic discourse centered on the concepts of “whiteness,” “white fragility,” and “white privilege”—is spreading rapidly through the federal government. Last month, a private diversity consultant, Howard Ross, conducted a training for federal financial agencies called “Difficult Conversations about Race in Troubling Times,” which asked white employees at the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, the National Credit Union Association, and the Officer of the Comptroller to pledge “allyship amid the George Floyd Tragedy.”
According to whistleblower documents, the training begins with the premise that “virtually all White people contribute to racism” and have internalized “fairly consistent narratives about race” that “don’t support the dismantling of racist institutions.” Therefore, the trainers argue, white federal employees must “struggle to own their racism” and “invest in race-based growth.”
“White managers” are asked to create “safe spaces” where black employees can explain “what it means to be Black” and be “seen in their pain.” White employees are instructed to “provide unconditional solidarity,” remain silent, and “sit in the discomfort” of their own racism. If any conflicts arise, the trainers insist that whites “don’t get to decide when someone is being too emotional, too rash, [or] too mean” and cannot protest if a person of color “responds to their oppression in a way [they] don’t like.”
[Andrew A. Michta, “The Captive Mind and America’s Resegregation” Wall Street Journal, July 31]
