Rip Van Roekel
I don’t generally find it difficult to criticize NEA presidents, but stomping on Dennis Van Roekel’s first keynote speech feels a lot like kicking the puppy who just made a mess on your carpet. Sure it stinks, but you don’t really want to punish him for it, do you?
If Reg Weaver was the life of the party, Van Roekel is the designated driver. He continues a long NEA tradition of boring white guys. He could take charisma lessons from Gray Davis. His most endearing quality is to goodnaturedly play Margaret Dumont to Lily Eskelsen’s Groucho Marx. (Just an aside here: When Eskelsen becomes NEA president, Randi Weingarten won’t find one Education Week reporter in her office, never mind five).
Eskelsen completed her comedic introduction of Van Roekel, who opened with: “It’s always hard when somebody’s introduction is better than the speech you’re going to give.”
Anyway, let’s put aside the less-than-electrifying delivery and the modest and infrequent applause from the delegates, and concentrate on the text itself. Van Roekel had three main points: 1) transform, not just reform, public education; 2) strengthen the labor movement; and 3) increase organizing.
Numbers 1 and 3 are familiar topics from other presidents and other speeches. “We must be willing to ask new questions and seek new answers. We must reexamine widely held views, be open to new ideas, new strategies and new opportunities,” he said, followed two sentences later by denouncing vouchers, standardized test scores and charter schools, repeating “That is not a solution!” after each.
“I am asking you to organize like never before,” he said, but while Reg Weaver would ask each delegate to “Gimme Five!” new members, the only specific thing Van Roekel asked the delegates to do was to sign up for an activist e-mail list on a new web site NEA will create.
No, the new item was Number 2. Van Roekel used the words “union” or “labor” 14 times in his speech, which is roughly 13 times more often than any previous NEA president. If Bob Chase’s mantra was “new unionism,” Van Roekel’s may be old unionism. I suggested last January that his duties as liaison with the labor federations while he was vice president seemed to be carrying over into his policies as president, and his speech bears that out.
“Our efforts were built on the successes of unions in the private sector,” he said. “The union movement created the middle class, ended child labor, championed public education and gave working men and women a strong voice. Plain and simple, you can’t have a middle class without unions! We need unions.”
The first day was shorter than usual because everyone needed to get to Petco Park so Van Roekel could throw out the first pitch at tonight’s Padres-Dodgers game. Only three NEA Board of Director-created new business items were debated and approved. The key one was New Business Item A, which instructs the union to develop an action plan “to inform and influence President Obama’s proposal to turn around 5,000 schools with $5 billion in five years.”
Parents in low-performing schools who worry about what kind of education their children will receive will be happy to learn the plan will “protect contractual and legal rights of NEA members,” involve local unions in discussions about charter conversions, and “tell the story to America of the importance of unions in assuring great public schools for every student.” They first better tell the story to President Obama and Secretary Duncan, both of whom selected schools for their own children that do not have collective bargaining.
Finally, I just wanted to mention a line in a campaign speech by Greg Johnson of Oklahoma, who is running for a seat on the NEA Executive Committee. He said, “I challenge you to think of a world where there is no NEA.”
If you insist, Greg.
July 4th, 2009 at 10:38
[...] Mike Antonucci, the rabid union hating blogger at Intercepts, is at the NEA RA and claims: When (Lily) Eskelsen becomes NEA president, Randi Weingarten won’t find one Education Week reporter in her office. [...]