In spite of its name, the interest of the NEA's leaders in education falls far below their interest in achieving radical political and social ends. Their goal is to control Congress, the fifty state legislatures, the Democrat Party, the curriculum in all the schools, public and private, and the entire teaching profession. Another basic principle must be found and accepted. Free public education is a long-term investment that the state may be a better place in which to live and in which to make a living. Mr. Blumenfeld chronicles the NEA's rise to political power with the leaders own words.
Education is one of the most thoroughly political enterprises in American life.
More public money is spent for education than for any other single function of state and local government. And, finally, NEA will organize this profession from top to bottom into logical operating units that can move easily and effectively and with power unmatched by any other organized group. After all Senators were notified of NEA opposition to President Nixon s nominations of Judges Clement Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell to the U.S. Supreme Court, the nominations were withdrawn. We are realistic enough to know that the great lobbies have power, and that if we re going to get a share of the pie, we'd better move in alongside of them. Our first major objective, politically and legislatively, will be to reverse the national leadership in Washington and put a friend of education in the White House and more friends of education in Congress.