The largest union in the U.S., with more than 3.1 million members, is the teachers union, less known to the public by it’s proper name, the National Education Association (NEA).

In 2007 alone, the NEA spent more than $32 million on political lobbying, and more than $80 million on contributions almost exclusively to left-wing activist groups and non-educational causes like the Democratic Leadership Council, Democratic GAIN, National Council of La Raza, and even the now nefarious ACORN. According to John Berthoud, “Between 1990 and 2002, 95% of NEA candidate and party donations went to Democrats.”

That’s quite the stranglehold, eh?

Beyond totally undermining the media-promoted perception that lobbying is perpetrated mainly by corporations or right-wing enterprises — indeed, of the top 20 all-time lobbyists, only 3 at the bottom tilt their contributions to Republican representatives, most lean heavily towards Democrats — these facts explain how Democrats can be so brazen in their opposition to school choice while practicing it for their own children.

[Wall Street Journal] Michelle and Barack Obama have settled on a Washington, D.C., school for their daughters, and you will not be surprised to learn it is not a public institution. Malia, age 10, and seven-year-old Sasha will attend the Sidwell Friends School, the private academy that educates the children of much of Washington’s elite.

Vice President-elect Joe Biden’s grandchildren attend Sidwell — as did Chelsea Clinton — where tuition is close to $30,000 a year. The Obama girls have been students at the private University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, where tuition runs above $21,000. “A number of great schools were considered,” said Katie McCormick Lelyveld, a spokeswoman for Mrs. Obama. “In the end, the Obamas selected the school that was the best fit for what their daughters need right now.”

Note the word “selected,” as in made a choice. The Obamas are fortunate to have the means to send their daughters to private school, and no one begrudges them that choice given that Washington’s public schools are among the worst in America.

Most D.C. parents would also love to be able to choose a better school for their child, but they lack the financial means to do so. The Washington Opportunity Scholarship Program each year offers up to $7,500 to some 1,900 kids to attend private schools, but Democrats in Congress want to kill it. Average family income for kids in the voucher program is about $22,000.

Mr. Obama says he opposes such vouchers, because “although it might benefit some kids at the top, what you’re going to do is leave a lot of kids at the bottom.” The example of his own children refutes that: The current system offers plenty of choice to kids “at the top” while abandoning those at the bottom.

Jonah Goldberg adds the hypocrisy isn’t the issue, rather, “The scandal is that these politicians tolerate such awful [public] schools at all… The Democratic Party continues to tolerate this sort of thing because public school teachers continue to be reliably liberal voters. And their unions cut big checks.”

Prof. Lilla urges conservative intellectuals to “own up to their elite status and defend the need for elites.” The need for elites? Most of us nonelites are a little down on elites right now after the role they played in the current mortgage crisis and its resulting meltdown of the financial markets and global economy.

I believe William F. Buckley meant it when he said he’d prefer being governed by the first 2,000 people in the Boston telephone directory rather than the entire faculty of Harvard University. Surely those 2,000 people would include its fair share of plumbers, builders and Sarah Palins.

– Baltimore’s Robert W. Smith, in a letter to the Wall Street Journal.

Read the whole thing. I love the part where some people complained that Ms. Vogt didn’t go through the “proper channels” — how’s that for our brave public school systems: Heaven forbid a kid think for themselves.

John Kass, Chicago Tribune.
November 14, 2008

Catherine Vogt—the brave 8th grader who used a T-shirt test to find out about political tolerance in Obamaland—is something of a celebrity now, thanks to you readers of this column.

By the time you read this, she will have already finished a round of TV and radio interviews, including a PBS spot for a Philadelphia station. It’s all somewhat unsettling for a 14-year-old girl who had important high school entrance exams Thursday and a tryout for “The Music Man” at Gwendolyn Brooks Middle School in Oak Park.

“Well, a lot of people came up to me and told me that they saw me in the paper, and my teacher told me that a lot of people were telling her ‘Way to go, way to support your student’ and everything,” Catherine told me Thursday. “It’s been very exciting and hectic too.”

The Catherine Vogt Experiment on Diversity of Thought took place before the presidential election. She shared her idea secretly with her history teacher, Norma Cassin-Pountney.

Catherine wore a McCain shirt one day and secretly recorded the comments of teachers and students in her journal. The next day, she wore an Obama shirt and also recorded the comments.

Her findings?

When she wore the McCain shirt, she was stupid and was told to go die. One kid said she should be “crucifixed,” which should prompt outrage from that student’s grammar/lit teacher. Crucifixed?

One student whispered—perhaps like Winston Smith in “1984″—”I really like your shirt.” But she said it quietly so no one else would hear and denounce her.

And when Catherine wore the Obama shirt? Her brains grew back and she was smart again and welcomed into polite society.

Since many liberal journalists live in Oak Park, I expect to receive many snarky reviews. My crime? I dared to illustrate, through the actions of a brave 8th-grade girl, that even high-minded liberal communities can be intolerant, no matter how many times parents gush on about “diversity” at their cocktail parties.

So much for the audacity of hope.

But it’s also true that if Catherine lived in a beet-red community and wore an Obama shirt, she’d get a similar negative, intolerant and ugly reaction. And certainly some Republican children would outrage their grammar/lit teachers by wanting her crucifixed as well.

All such outrage is predictable. Whether red or blue or right or left, many adults don’t get it. But Catherine Vogt sure gets it: Children learn their politics from their parents.

A kid doesn’t learn to love Democrats or hate Republicans or vice versa by reading editorials. You can’t blame this one on bloggers or “Grand Theft Auto.” You can’t even blame Fitty Cent or however he incorrectly spells his own stage name.

Many parents in Oak Park and elsewhere want their kids to figure out things for themselves. Others only want a mirror for their own tribalism. Parents, Catherine told me, “are actually a pretty big influence on kids. They take a lot of what’s home to school.”

At school Thursday in Ms. Cassin-Pountney’s class, they discussed Catherine’s experiment and my column.

“The students were mostly shocked because when they read it they kind of figured it out. They were like, ‘Oh, I actually said that thing to her and now—I’m not mentioned—but I’m actually in the paper for saying something mean?’ ”

She said her classmates tried to determine whether she cracked and gave up their names to me, but because she’s not a Chicago machine politician under federal indictment, she didn’t have to name names.

“They were all like, ‘So who did you mention and what did you say?’ But I didn’t give out any names,” she said.

There were some rough patches on Thursday. The phone rang off the hook at home. She had her big tests and that tryout. And her parents—liberal Democratic mom and conservative Republican dad—had to run down to school to stave off an impromptu imposition of the Fairness Doctrine.

“Some parents were upset that one teacher remarked about her shirt. And other parents were upset that the experiment was conducted in the first place, and didn’t go through ‘proper channels,’ ” said Catherine’s mom, Pamela Webster.

“So we rushed down to school to say we were backing the principal and all the teachers and not to make a big thing of it,” she said. “It was just crazy. There was no crime committed here.”

Not even a thought crime?

“No,” she said. “We support the principal and the school. Let this be a way for students and teachers to discuss the issue. That’s what we want in our home, not indoctrination but discussion.”

Catherine still won’t say whether she’s a Democrat or a Republican.

“I still have four years to pick a guy or a woman,” she said of the presidential election in 2012, which will be her first. “I’ve still got four more years. Then I can decide.”

Catherine says she doesn’t want to become a lawyer, but perhaps a surgeon. Either way, this week, she was a great teacher.

Thank you, Catherine.

This is disgusting. I heard about this but the story isn’t done justice until you see this arrogant teacher purposely humiliate a child with totally slanted and context-lacking argument, and until you see the pain on the child’s face and her fellow students staring at her.

Interesting letter from the WSJ:

In “Don’t Know Much About History” (de gustibus, Sept. 5) David Feith, in his criticism of today’s civic education, demonstrates yet another American characteristic: lack of historical memory. Civic literacy?

Take a look at the survey done in 1943 by Columbia University historian Allan Nevins of 6,000 entering freshmen at some of the most distinguished colleges and universities in America. Over half did not know the dates of the Civil War, could not locate St. Louis on a map; nearly two-thirds identified Walt Whitman as an American bandleader — they mistook him for Paul Whiteman. A goodly number also identified the philosopher and psychologist William James as Jesse’s brother.

Some things never change.

Sol Gittleman
Medford, Mass.