Randi Weingarten, head of the American Federation of Teachers, hosted a Trump-bashing, anti-conservative webinar…and then called it “professional development” for teachers.
Weingarten interviewed NYU professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat, who likened Trump to Hitler and Mussolini. She said, “When somebody like Trump comes along, he spawns imitators…they used to be called mini-Mussolinis and mini-Hitlers, so now we have, like, the mini-Trumps.”
Ben-Ghiat also disparaged homeschool families, saying the political right wants to “Get everybody out of the system, put them in homeschool so they can be indoctrinated.” In reality, many thousands of families choose to homeschool specifically to get their kids away from the political indoctrination happening in their government-assigned schools.
The webinar also disparaged Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and slammed the Republican Party, with Ben-Ghiat claiming “The GOP has excited democracy.”
In the eyes of the union, watching this hate-filled webinar somehow makes teachers better at their jobs. The AFT provides participants with a certificate of completion and urges them to count the hour toward the professional development hours required to renew their state licenses.
The whole event begs the question of what, exactly, a teacher’s job really is – conveying information and critical thinking skills to the next generation, or merely voting the way the union bosses want and teaching kids to one day do the same? The AFT’s answer doesn’t match what families want and what students deserve.
To learn more about how the AFT elevates activism over academics, read “Randi Weingarten Prioritizes Political Power Over Students,” “In The Name Of Educating Children, The AFT Once Again Promotes Its Ideological Agenda,” and “Putting Politics Over Students.”
For more information about teachers unions, check out the IWF Education Freedom Center’s Teachers Union Resource Center.