Teachers’ Union Fights Parents’ Rights

The American Federation of Teachers, the teacher’s union, recently posted on its web site an internal document bragging about how it successfully undermines parental power in education.

In 2010, California voters passed into law a right of parents to hold petition drives to force reform in failing public schools. Under California law, a 51% majority of parents can shake up a failing school’s administration or invite a charter operator to take over a school. This law is commonly referred to as the “parent trigger.” The merit and utility of this law became obvious; and earlier this year parents in the state of Connecticut tried to institute an identical measure for the parents of that state.

AFT published the name of their effort on their web site—it was called “How Connecticut Diffused The Parent Trigger.” AFT began an intensive lobbying campaign to defeat the measure; and they succeeded by use of the subterfuge which they called “engaging the opposition.” They called together groups of legislators who were particularly vulnerable to union pressures and created a system of “school governance councils” to mediate the school problems instead of granting petition rights to parent groups. Interestingly, their conferences did not include any parent groups interested in promoting the petition process.

The AFT document on the web bragged that the name of the councils is “a misnomer: they are advisory and do not have true governing authority.”

It is obvious that the AFT does not want parental interference in their teaching and indoctrination activities in the public schools—never mind the quality of the education they are handing out.

Many are sympathetic with teachers because teachers are thought to be so underpaid. But according to the Department of Education statistics for 2007-2008, the average public school teacher brought in over $53,000 plus health insurance and retirement benefits. The Census Bureau reports that for 2008, the mean household income in the United States was $52,000.

God’s Different Attitude Toward Sin and Self-righteousness

In 1 Corinthians 1:2, we see how the apostle, Paul addresses the believers in Corinth as “…those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be holy….” There are similar greetings to every other church to which Paul wrote with the exception of the Galatians. There seems to be a reason that Paul did not address the Galatians with such an apparently warm heart of love for them.

In the case of the Corinthians, Paul was writing to them to address some very serious sins that were being committed by the people there. They were divisions in the church, lawsuits among the believers, gross sexual immorality in the church, mishandling of marriage relationships, worshipping incorrectly, etc. The Corinthians were eating food sacrificed to idols and giving outsiders to the faith reason for believing that they were partaking in idol worship. Paul admonished them to give up those sinful practices. But…he never indicated that they were anything but very loved believers and members of Christ’s body.

To the Galatians, however, Paul was addressing a situation that apparently was more serious than all the sins of the Corinthians. They were beginning to rely on things of the law and on their own righteous activity to bring them the salvation that only Christ could gain for them through faith in Him. They were coming under the influence of the Judaizers who were encouraging them to observe special days, months, years, and seasons. They were, again, relying on circumcision to impart righteousness to them.

Salvation is by grace, through faith. Nothing we can do will ever merit Gods approval unless He empowers it. Oh, yes, sin is terrible; and God will never condone it. He warns us repeatedly in His word to avoid sin at all costs. But…there seems to be something even more grievous than the ordinary sins of the Corinthians in God’s eyes—that is relying on our own righteousness to gain heaven for us.