Randi’s War on Parents

Whatever she thinks she’s doing, American Federation of Teachers chief Randi Weingarten isn’t helping her members with such over-the-top extremism as claiming that things like Florida’s new parentalrights law are “the way in which wars start.”

Yes, she actually argued on a podcast that parents and politicians worried about some teachers and school staff seeking to indoctrinate kids are just pushing “propaganda” and “misinformation.”

“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.”

The other side, she claims, wants “to marginalize LGBTQ kids, censor teachers and ban books.” This, about a law that simply stops lesson plans and so on about trans issues for tots through 3rd grade. Somehow, this amounts to “right-wing extremists . . . trying to put back in the closet people who may be gay or trans.”

She’s also upset about efforts to keep critical race theory out of the classroom, insisting it’s a bid to make kids “hate each other.” In fact, it’s about not imposing far-out racist thinking that pushes children to see everything in strict racial categories.

But Weingarten’s not alone. The other main national teachers union, the National Education Association, also claims of these issues that “a tiny but extremely vocal minority is determined to turn our classrooms into battlegrounds for their vicious culture wars.”

Such thinking led to the infamous National School Boards Association letter comparing concerned parents to domestic terrorists, which moved the Justice Department to sic the FBI on parents who speak their minds at public school-board meetings.

It sure looks like it’s the education-industrial complex (the AFT, NEA, NSBA and so on) that has declared war against the First Amendment rights and prerogatives of parents, with strong backing from the White House. Hence the US Department of Education rules pushing the racist “1619 Project” and other race-obsessive disinformation into school curricula.

Just who is out to “start wars” here, Randi?