Naturally, once the trade unions and their bureaucratic and political allies are in the monopolistic saddle, they concentrate their attention on staying there.  This is nowhere better portrayed than in the official NEA Handbook, 1996-1997, examined briefly in the following pages.

Confusing Educational Ends & Means
        A quite hopeless situation confronts people if they come to think of one means to an end as if it were the end itself.  It is a simple enough idea.  If I need groceries (and I do); and by habit I act as if there is only one source for those groceries (the corner store); then I am at the mercy of the corner store, and may well think of it (the means) as equivalent to the groceries themselves (the end).  In that sorry situation, if someone says "groceries," I, like Pavlov's dog, think "corner store."  At that point, I am oblivious to the other grocery providers available to me, and am damaging my chances of securing the best groceries at favorable prices.  And, I am encouraging indifferent or even slovenly behavior at the corner store because its proprietor knows that he need not excel in order to retain my patronage.

        One among many means to an end can be measured, assessed, and compared to other means available for seeking the same objective.  In that circumstance, I have a chance to make a rational selection among alternatives.  But if the means comes to be seen as the end, ruination beckons.  The means cannot effectively be evaluated, because it has been elevated to the level of good-in-itself.  (For a fuller discussion of this destructive condition, see, e.g., pp. 91-97 in my Financing Education:  The Struggle Between Governmental Monopoly and Parental Control, 1996.)

        Not surprisingly, a great deal of the defense of today's educational finance monopoly (EFM) is devoted to promoting profound confusion between educational ends and educational means.  To the extent the monopoly's public schools can be portrayed as good-in-themselves; as the end of public policy rather than as one means of achieving the public policy of educational achievement; then critics of the status quo have been effectively neutralized and the monopoly's governmental schools are beyond serious evaluation and criticism.  The NEA is a classic defender of EFM's status quo.  It is a perpetual fountain of ends/means confusion.  It persistently speaks of "public education" as the thing which, above all else, must be protected, preserved, and funded at ever-increasing levels.  It seems essentially unable to speak of education for America's youth as the end of public policy, with public schools as one alternative means thereto.  Yet, unless that distinction is made, America's citizens and parents are trapped in irrationality and impotence regarding education, just as I would be in buying groceries if I imagined the corner store was the only choice available.

        Lest readers imagine I am exaggerating the NEA's monotonous, self-serving consistency in this regard, I urge you to examine the NEA Handbook 1996-1997, pp. 7 - 10.  Those four pages contain the "calls to action" uttered by the NEA's President and its Executive Director.  These people are, most assuredly, not spokesmen for the education of America's youth.  They are, rather, chanters of the monopoly's mantra:  "public education" proclaimed as the end, rather than as one means to the good end of educational achievement for youngsters.  "Public education," to be defended at all costs; never to be assessed nor measured outside its own tax-increasing "reforms," and especially never to be compared to alternative educational providers; to be sheltered against all critics by branding them "extremists" who are "disproportionately from the far right-wing" — even though those critics include concerned citizens from all over the political spectrum; to be protected, in short, by as many smoke screens as can be squeezed into four pages.
 
        Never once is there introduced in these tone-setting pages this reality:  the true end of rational public policy on education is the educational empowerment of young people, under the loving and watchful eyes of parents and guardians.  Never once is there any recognition that this good end can be and always has been achieved by many means, of which public education rightly seen is but one.  Thus does the NEA try, as it regularly tries, to confuse ends and means.  It is time for America's citizens and parents to say "enough."  It is time to break apart the monopolistic presumption which limits those citizens unnaturally, and which deprives the monopoly's schools from experiencing the normal incentives to excel, and thereby make themselves truly worthy of parents' choices.  Most urgently, it is time to recognize and state plainly this simple and decisive fact:  the NEA and its smaller educational trade union cousins and local affiliates have as their central purpose in life the enhancement and enrichment of the material benefits of their members.  They do not have as their special mission the enhancement and enrichment of the educational welfare of America's youth.

        To recognize and state this inescapable reality is in no sense to demonize the unions, nor their members.  Material enrichment for members is what trade unions exist for, after all.  And there is no surprise in their attempts to portray their self-serving efforts as if they were altruistic.  But if the educational unions cannot be expected to have children's welfare as their basic focus, who in the monopolistic system can?  The essential answer is "no one."  The "demon" is not the educators nor their unions.  The demon, rather is the set of monopolistic financing policies and structures which do not provide for the welfare of parents and children.  The easiest way to do that?  Break finance monopoly by letting parents assign some or all of the tax dollars assigned to education.

The "Bedrock of Democracy" Smoke Screen
        If sufficient numbers of citizens succumb to the ends/means confusion, they can be expected to resist any change in the status quo, imagining the means to be the end, and the "is" to be an "ought."  One of the favorite ways of making the means serve as an end is to pretend that the nation's very existence as a democracy depends on the continuance of the finance monopoly.  Thus, for example, we note the following official NEA statement in its current Handbook, p. 243:  "The Association also believes that public education is the cornerstone of our social, economic, and political structure . . . .Consequently, the survival of democracy requires that every state maintain a system of public education . . . ."  "Cornerstone" of our whole national structure?  "Democracy's very survival" depends on EFM?

        Unless we are ourselves mesmerized victims of the status quo, we know, of course, that such statements are hokum.  American democracy started, planted its roots, and became entirely customary without state monopoly schools.  Moreover, Americans who have not gone through public monopoly schools traditionally have fulfilled their citizens' duties at least as meritoriously as any others.  Then, too, we know democracies worldwide function magnificently without educational finance monopoly, and with complete parental freedom of educational venue.  Finally, we know that, if we were able to start with a clean slate, and know all we now know, we  would never think to install a monopoly as our educational financing method.  In other words, this "bedrock of democracy" smoke screen is a complete fabrication.  But it is a favorite theme of EFM's defenders, including especially the NEA, and it appears over and over in the NEA's literature.  It is nothing but a manipulatory tool used to reinforce the idea that any change in the means of delivering educational dollars will be an attack on the very end of education, in this case the imaginary end of preserving democracy.  Preserving democracy is a great objective, of course, but monopolistic state schools are not necessary for the purpose.

        This "bedrock of democracy" smoke screen is, in truth, the cornerstone of the NEA's self-serving menu of resolutions adopted and reaffirmed by the organization over the years.  The words just quoted are contained in the first of the more than 300 resolutions included in the current Handbook, pp. 243-342.  These resolutions range from the generally preposterous, such as the one cited above, to the more particularly preposterous, such as A13 (p. 248):  "The National Education Association believes that maintenance of a strong system of public education is paramount to maintaining a strong U.S. national defense."  This specification of the "bedrock" smoke screen is especially interesting, for several reasons:  first, the word "paramount" is normally used to mean "superior to" or ultimate, in which case it does not logically fit as used here.  Perhaps they meant to say "tantamount," which would normally mean "equivalent to" or "prerequisite for" and which would logically fit, but of course be entirely untrue.  To suggest that there is a causal link between educational finance monopoly, on the one hand, and national security, on the other hand, is to engage in a simple illusion.  There is no causal relationship to be found.  "National security" is a self-evident national good, and linking it to EFM is just a gratuitous attempt to wrap the dubious EFM in the non-dubious flag.

        As bizarre as such claims are seen to be when looked at objectively, they help us understand how a system as humanly pernicious as EFM is kept in place despite its human destructiveness.  It helps explain the meaning of a term I often use:  "social inertia manipulated by vested interests."  Our monopolistic funding system grew in history, planted deep roots before its destructiveness was obvious, and is supported by habit — and that is the "social inertia" which is in turn manipulated by those who benefit from the status quo, such as the NEA.  Heard by the unsuspecting, coming from allegedly altruistic sources, such claims as "bedrock of democracy" and "paramount [sic] to a strong national defense" will give caution to anyone who does not know better.  In effect, such claims, until exposed for the illusions they are, raise the stakes in the minds of the susceptible:  "Wow, little did I know that monopoly-protected state schools are necessary for freedom itself!  The sky is falling, indeed."  That is why clearing away smoke screens is such an important part of achieving parental freedom.  More smoke screen clearing follows.

Particular Attacks on Parental Rights in Education:  The NEA's "Bottom Line"
        In the balance of this essay we will dwell on resolutions A-25, A-26, A-27, A-28, and B-63 of the NEA Handbook, 1996-1997 to show how the self-serving positions of the NEA move from general smoke screens, aimed to confuse ends and means, to the more particular smoke screens employed to obliterate any alternate funding method which might threaten the monopoly's control of the financial spigot.  What we will see is that all such alternative approaches to achieving educational excellence via parental freedom and choice are treated with complete contempt, to the point of using caricature, rather than reality, to describe them.
 Resolution A-25 in the current NEA Handbook is entitled "Charter and Nontraditional Public School Options," and it begins by asserting that the NEA ". . . supports innovation in public education" (emphasis added).  And thus we see again the exclusive concern with state-owned schools rather than with education for youth.  More pointedly, what we find in the balance of the resolution is utter preoccupation with control over finances, the tax dollars citizens intend to achieve educational goals, but the NEA intends to turn to its own betterment.  The NEA asserts, for example, that when ". . . nontraditional school options are proposed, all school employees must be directly involved in the design, implementation, and governance of these programs."  Talk about "dealer's control"!

        Above all, according to the NEA, any new approaches (which must be 'public,' i.e., state monopoly, by definition) ". . . must not divert current funds from the regular public school programs"  (emphasis added) — not even if student numbers decline in the "regular" public schools, we are forced to conclude.  There can be no change that disturbs current funding, they are saying.  There can be no opportunity to reallocate some current dollars to promising better ways to expend them.  Any state that accepts such categories confronts the need to increase expenditure as the price of any reform, rather than trying to increase the efficiency of tax expenditures.  That preposterous presumption, in turn, becomes the cornerstone of the famous "break the bank" smoke screen used against efforts to promote parental freedom in education.  "Break the bank" says, in effect, "Since all current and projected funding must be maintained, then any school choice program must have new dollars to sustain it " — and that, of course, could "break the bank."

        The NEA's Resolution A-26 is dubbed "Deleterious Programs" and mixes smearing techniques with logical failures to produce a truly amazing smoke screen.  It begins by lumping together all sorts of unrelated items which, the NEA says, ". . . are detrimental to public education and must be eliminated:  privatization, performance contracting, tax credits for tuition to private and parochial schools, voucher plans (or funding formulas that have the same effect as vouchers), planned program budgeting systems (PPBS), and evaluations by private, profit-making groups."  What a collection!  The single unifying reality among these disparate items is this:  the NEA sees them as threatening monopoly control of educational finances.  And A-26 elsewhere asserts that any ". . . weakening of collective bargaining protections would also be detrimental to the health and well-being of the public schools and should be defeated."
 And so it goes, over and over in NEA Resolutions A-25 and A-26:  essential preoccupation with self-interest and self-servingness; repeated portrayal of a means (the state's monopoly schools) as if it were the end (the educational welfare of the young); then, complete ignoring of that true end, nowhere referred to; and, above all, doing whatever it takes to preserve NEA control over all tax dollars dedicated to education.

        Resolution A-27 is entitled "Federally or State-Mandated Choice/ Parental Option Plans."  It condemns and opposes any and all "such federally or state-mandated choice or parental option plans."  Why?  The answer to that question, as stated in the Handbook, is logically absurd, and presumably cannot be what they meant to say.  What they say is that they are opposed to all such plans because they "compromise the association's commitment to free, equitable, universal, and quality public education for every student" (emphasis added).  Surely not even the National Education Association would think its "commitment" is what counts in the objective order.  Presumably, what they really mean is that parental choice, in their view, would "compromise" "quality public education."

        Even if that logically intact thought is what they really mean, it is a shockingly self-serving and erroneous assertion.  It certainly would come as a shock, in any case, to the parents of those democracies around the world where parental choice prevails, and to those American parents fortunate enough to be able to exercise choice now and in the past.  But, of course, by this time we know what this and related resolutions are truly about:  maintain monopoly financial control in NEA-type hands.

        Resolution A-28 is brief but genuinely vitriolic.  It says that the NEA believes that any forms of school funding which give parents the ability to decide how educational tax dollars are assigned "undermine public education," reduce funds for "public education," and potentially contribute to "racial, economic, and social segregation of children."  What do we see in these few lines, then?  We see first and repeatedly the purposeful recitation of the "ends/means confusion" previously noted, in which the onlooker is invited errantly to imagine that "public education" is the end to be served, rather than just one means to the end of educational achievement for America's youth.

        And then we see the smoke screen broadside in which the simple justice of parental freedom in choosing the educational environment for children is portrayed as inflicting on society every imaginable cancerous disease.  Parental freedom means attacking "public" education, we are told — when, in truth, such freedom would provide true incentives for those public schools to excel and thereby make themselves choiceworthy.  Parental freedom will contribute to all forms of segregation, we are told — when, in truth, the state monopoly public schools of America's major cities are marked by massive educational failure and are hugely segregated now, in exactly the ways the NEA decries:  racially, economically, and socially; and even as the financially-deprived inner-city private schools continue to provide shining examples of positive integration of all faiths, races, and classes, while at the same time producing positive educational outcomes.

        It would not be an exaggeration, I am sorry to say, to describe such tirades as those contained in Resolution A-28 as examples of, if not the "Big Lie" at work, at the least the "Big Smear."  Throw enough mud at your target (in this case, parents' rights to see to the educational welfare of their children) and maybe some will stick.  Throw that mud often and repeatedly, and surely some will stick.  How else are we to explain such erroneous nonsense as we regularly find in NEA statements?

        The last resolution we will note is B-63, "Home Schooling."  What is interesting about this is not just its general contempt for home schooling which, we are told, "cannot provide the student with a comprehensive education experience"; nor is it just the NEA's insistence that, if home schooling must be permitted, let it only be permitted under the conditions of extreme bureaucratic complications and controls.  What is most interesting is the NEA's final insistence — one may even say "ultimate and everywhere" insistence — that, whatever else may happen in home schooling, we must absolutely insist on "all expenses being borne by the parents."  It did not take long to get to the NEA's bottom line, did it?  No matter that each home schooled student reduces costs for the monopoly system.  No matter that, when the home schooled number in the thousands, and then the hundreds of thousands, the monopoly system should have much less need for tax dollars.  Even then, the NEA insists, do not let any of those dollars follow the child for his educational benefit!  That is what EFM is all about, and it is perfectly represented by the NEA.

        This brief look at prevailing NEA Resolutions should enable any objective observer to see the reality of things:  the NEA is a trade union; its purpose in life naturally is the financial and material betterment of its members and bureaucratic structures; that becomes educationally destructive only because this union and its educational cousins are able to operate in the monopolistic vacuum created by educational finance monopoly (EFM); once in control the NEA strives above all else to maintain that control, and characterizes as perverse any reform which would enable parents to help decide where educational tax dollars should be assigned.  That which is shameful in all this is not that they act that way — that is in the nature of things.  That which is shameful, rather, is that many unsuspecting onlookers permit their own vision to be clouded by such self-serving smoke screens.  I hope these brief comments on the NEA Handbook can help "protect the innocent," and assist all objective observers to see this truth:  anyone who turns to the NEA to solve America's educational problems is making "The Wrong Diagnosis," and prescribing "The Wrong Cure"  (See my 'Fixing American Educational Up to Now:  Wrong Diagnosis, Wrong Cure,' Network News & Views, Vol. XIII, No. 8, August, 1994.)

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The Blum Center grants full permission for all of its documents to be copied, in part or in whole, to extend the reach of the Center's messages and information.  We appreciate it when our readers keep us apprised of state and national developments in the area of school choice, particularly legislative developments.  Any Blum Center documents not available on our web page may be obtained by contacting us by telephone, fax, or mail.  Virgil C. Blum Center for Parental Freedom in Education Brooks Hall, Room 209 Marquette University * P.O. Box 1881 * Milwaukee, WI 53201-1881 Phone: 414-288-7040* Fax: 414-288-3170 E-mail: blumcenter@vms.csd.mu.edu

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