The nation’s largest teachers union, one notable for its progressive partisanship, is again showing its ideological cards. Defending Education has obtained internal documents for the National Education Association’s “Advancing LGBTQ+ Justice” training in early December, revealing a detailed race and gender ideology script for teachers.
The NEA LGBT training is intended to help members work with colleagues “who belong to and are allies of the LGBTQ+ community.”
Once again, the NEA is showing its priorities have nothing to do with student learning or better classroom instruction. Instead of focusing on academics, its objectives are explicitly activist — aimed at developing a “shared understanding of the anti-LGBTQ+ policy landscape,” advancing “counter narratives of inclusion and equity,” and examining LGBT issues “to address systems of privilege and oppression as it relates to LGBTQ+ educators and students.”
The training explains that “key terms” are vital to understand ahead of the meeting because “language around LGBTQ+ issues shift and change every two years” and urges members to “familiarize yourself with these terms so that vocabulary isn’t a barrier to your participation.” The sheer volume of these terms reveals a growing ideological lexicon that has drifted from core academics.
Key terms include anti-bias anti-racist, which is described as a “teaching methodology focused on identity, diversity, justice, and action” that helps students “learn the impact of unfairness” and “take action when they observe, or experience injustice.” The glossary also claims “Black and Indigenous people face different and often more severe forms of racial oppression and cultural erasure due to systemic White supremacy and colonialism,” when defining BIPOC.
The glossary then runs through a long list of gender identity labels, as well as a section on pronouns, which it describes as “essential” while insisting that asking for a person’s “preferred pronouns” is now considered offensive. The emphasis on mastering this ever-expanding vocabulary underscores where the NEA has been putting resources: ideological capture over academics.
The NEA pronoun guide even states: “Plural pronouns are becoming more widely accepted as gender-neutral singular pronouns. It is grammatically correct to use singular ‘they’ to refer to a singular person of unknown gender or to a non-binary person who does not feel gendered pronouns work for them.” Suggested pronouns also include: “ze,” “zim” and “zir.”
The NEA is the largest labor union in the United States, representing nearly 3 million public school teachers and education professionals, with a stated mission to support public education. Yet, in recent years, the organization has moved decisively further left into outright activism.
It is the job of a teacher to teach facts and skills, not how to be a social justice activist. If NEA members are teaching students that it is possible to “not have a gender” or that pronouns can be “ze/zim,” how can parents trust them to teach something as basic as long division?
That mindset runs through every page of the training materials, which are unapologetically hyperpartisan.
In a document about “transgender youth,” the NEA claims, “The right has exploited ignorance about transgender people and our lack of an affirmative, race-forward message to advance anti-trans attacks, further splinter and impugn the left, and sabotage progressives on a broad range of issues.”
“Republicans in state legislatures have increasingly turned to anti-transgender rhetoric and legislation as a powerful complement to their arsenal of racist dog whistles used to whip up fear and consolidate power,” the document states. “Recently, they have paired these attacks with fear-mongering about Critical Race Theory, mobilizing their base with a potent mix of racist and transphobic tropes.”
The NEA is outright vilifying half the country for not agreeing with its ideology. According to the NEA, the only reason anyone would oppose its stance on race and gender ideology is if they are racist, transphobic, or Republican.
In response, the NEA is promoting what it calls the “Race Class Narrative,” which it says will “tell a convincing story of how our opposition uses strategic racism and transphobia to harm us all” — remarkably unifying rhetoric from the group that represents the nation’s largest bloc of teachers responsible for educating America’s children. In practice, the NEA is undermining public trust by behaving more like a political campaign than an educational organization.
The NEA states that it is also discriminatory if a school does not allow a transgender woman to use the women’s faculty bathroom, but allows that person to use a private unisex bathroom. They even admit the messaging on their “side” about transgender youth in sports has been unsuccessful and suggest that the best way to message on the issue is to connect “attacks on trans women athletes to the long legacy of discrimination against all women athletes.”
The focus on messaging and strategy to push unpopular policy positions held by NEA leadership cements the gap between parents and the teachers union, revealing a deep disconnect with public opinion. Every time public documentation of the NEA’s priorities comes to light, it becomes clearer that the union is aligned with an extremely progressive political agenda that prioritizes the union and teachers’ interests over students.
As the late poet and activist Maya Angelou famously said, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” The NEA is telling us exactly who it is, and it’s time we all believe them.
Kendall Tietz is an investigative reporter for Defending Education.
