Sam Sorbo - Commenting On Education

September 23rd, 2022

Teachers are good. Teachers' Unions are not.

The New Jersey Teachers' Union recently ran an ad condemning parents. (Read it here: https://www.foxnews.com/us/new-jersey-teachers-union-condemns-parents-extremist-new-ad) You read that right. The radical extremist teachers' union has the gall to accuse parents, who sacrifice for their children, of being “extremists” (the new buzzword for anyone with Biblical values).

I know something about the New Jersey Teachers' Union first-hand. Soon after we were married, my wife (my late wife Carol, who passed away of cancer in 2013) and I were living in New Jersey. I had just graduated from Princeton Theological Seminary and was working on my doctorate at Drew University. My wife had just graduated from Westminster Choir College, an elite school of music in Princeton, New Jersey. She began teaching in a public school near Trenton, New Jersey.

One day, she came home and asked me, “Should I join the teachers' union?” We talked about the pros and cons, including the cost, as best as we understood them. We concluded “no.” She went to school the next day and reported that she would decline to join the teachers' union. Later that day, a male teacher cornered her in a hallway, reached out, and unexpectedly and firmly gripped her arm and looked her in the eye, in the most stern and intimidating way, and said, “You WILL join the teachers' union.” With that he released her arm and walked away.

We were young. Candidly we were two farm kids – from Kansas and Oklahoma. We were now in the “major leagues.” We did not know our rights or how to push back. (Truth be told, we had no rights on this matter.) Not knowing what they might do to her if she refused, Carol joined the union. I have had no respect for teachers' unions from that day forward.

In spite of that horrific beginning, we chose to be supportive and drive to Atlantic City for the NEA (National Education Association) Convention. I wanted to go because the convention center was located on the Atlantic boardwalk, a spectacular location, and one of the speakers was the great Eric Sevareid of CBS Evening News. He was brilliant. He was a legend. So, off to Atlantic City we went.

Eric Sevareid

Mr. Sevareid did not disappoint. He was great. But before he spoke, we heard many other speakers. I was taken aback. At the time, I had naively thought that teachers – rather teachers' unions – cared about students. I had grown up in a home where my father had huge respect for teachers. I personally had my own “Teachers' Hall of Fame,” that is, teachers who had so blessed me.

But what I heard at the National Convention of the National Education Association was shocking. It was all about the teachers' rights and their demands. It was all about them. It was all about how to demand more. It was all about how to force school boards to give them more salary, benefits and everything else. There was not one mention about what would really help children learn. I was so shocked and disappointed.

As I left, I remarked to my wife, “The tone of this conference reminds me of the protesters of the Vietnam era.” (The Vietnam War had just ended.) As I drove away, I was profoundly unimpressed by the petty, demanding, childish teachers' unions.

And that was in the 1970s. It is considerably worse now. Teachers' unions exerted enormous pressure to keep schools closed, to require masks and coerced “vaccinations.” Teachers' unions have supported the teaching of the divisive and historically dishonest CRT, along with graphic sexual positions to children as young as kindergarten.

Sam Sorbo

So what should you do? Movie star and radio talk show host Sam Sorbo – married to movie star Kevin Sorbo – has some straightforward, no-holes-barred, no-nonsense advice. Warning: If you listen to her, fasten your seat belt.

LISTEN HERE.