Randi: ‘This is the way wars start’
National teachers-union boss Randi Weingarten has likened encouraging parents to get involved in how their kids are being taught to fighting words — saying it’s “the way in which wars start.”
The president of the American Federation of Teachers told “The Rick Smith Show” podcast this month that conservative lawmakers pushing to have more input in curriculum and textbooks are spurring parents to hate teachers and public education.
Weingarten (right) accused GOP officials in states such as Florida and Texas of falsely portraying teachers and administrators as indoctrinating kids amid spiraling school-culture battles on critical-race theory, gender identity and other issues.
“This is propaganda. This is misinformation. This is the way in which wars start,” she told host Rick Smith. “This is the way in which hatred starts.”
The union boss rejected the notion that teachers were surreptitiously leading schoolkids down ideological paths.
“We’re not indoctrinating,” she said. “We’re not grooming . . . What we’re doing is making sure we educate kids. We keep them safe. We keep them welcome. And we teach them how to think, not what to think.”
GOP lawmakers blasted Weingarten’s comments.
“Cut through her ridiculous hyperbole, and what is Randi Weingarten really saying? That parents don’t have a right to be involved in their child’s education,” tweeted Rep. Claudia Tenney, of Central New York. “Well she’s WRONG. I’ll always stand up for parents and our children!”
Weingarten has been a critic of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who put his state on the front lines of several education-policy clashes this year.
Most recently, he signed into law a bill that banned instruction related to gender identity and sexual orientation in kindergarten through the third grade.
Backers of the law say it shields kids from age-inappropriate material. Critics claim the legislation foments anti-LGBTQ sentiment, dubbing it the “Don’t Say Gay” bill.
On the podcast, Weingarten accused “right-wing extremists” of “trying to put back in the
closet people who may be gay or trans.”
DeSantis also passed legislation prohibiting the teaching of critical race theory in classrooms, arguing that the approach breeds division and makes kids “hate each other.”
Weingarten and others critical of DeSantis claim America’s history of racial injustice is not being fully presented in schools.
The union leader also took aim at Texas for allowing the prosecution of parents who oversee medical treatments for their transgender minors.
“These right-wing ideologues are just trying to create fear and anxiety and anger exploiting the fear that parents already have in order to win elections and end public education as we know it,” she said.
School-board meetings have become battlegrounds in recent years, with increasingly bitter clashes erupting over everything from mask mandates to gender identity.